Derby Talk

Congrats !!! Just to understand though - did you go from positive cant to negative cant on your FDW ? I think the RR tool instructions say positive cant on all front wheels (would have to check though). The debate continues on this board about positive or negative cant for the FDW, but positive can...

I had the same issue you had with inconsistent bends. What I did was eliminate the hammer and used my bench vise as a press to compress the assembly. Keep in mind that there is a degree of springback on steel so the press method may not over bend the nail like the hammer. Derbyworx also recommends ...

Welcome to PDA (Pinewood Derby Anonymous). Glad to hear it worked out. Railriding is the ticket. All hail WarpSpeed!!!

Lanes 4 and 7 are killers. If you throw out the 2 worst runs - and the fastest run on lane 3 - the: - average time goes from 4.1563 to 4.522 (negligible) - standard deviation goes from .023 to .011 (half). I would bet you caught a bad joint on those runs (lane 4 and 7). Do you have any video? Lane ...

Live and learn. You can "Do your best" even better next year (assuming your boy didn't cross over this year). Once I switched to bending axles, I never thought of going back to shims . . . Don't forget that with wood holes you can moisten them with water to help them swell a little tighter.

Actually car is built almost like the other. Same cant, wheelbase, com, must be better aligned. The only difference is that last year, I canted the holes, this year I bent the axles. Bending the axles offers you better ways to align. If hole is drilled off while trying to cant, no way of fixing. Ex...

Thanks for the followup. Looks like none of us were right! Just goes to show how difficult of a question it was.

dna1990 wrote:Oh, a few steps away from becoming a volunteer yourself...

That's how our District restarted their District races--I had "sucker" written on my forehead when I walked into Roundtable and asked the DE when the District race was going to be.

Awesome. Let's hope the competition hasn't picked up that much speed. What do you attribute the gain in speed to?

I just saw the track details on your other post. I'm wondering if you had joint problems on the track. Believe me, the joints were as good as they get. Which is not to say that they are good. With the old challenger track, you basically buy aluminum tracks and build a wooden frame for them. The lea...

That's a shame. I'd like to believe that they did an equally bad job with graphiting all of the cars. We run 16 races total for Rank and Grand Finals and don't lose any speed. As a matter of fact, this past weekend at Districts, my son's first race was within a thousandth of his 16th race. They were...

See my post here: http://derbytalk.com/viewtopic.php?t=4857 for the potential speed improvement with railriding.

I would align it to rail ride. I am a diehard believer of the value of railriding. Good luck whatever you decide.

We ran the District races yesterday on the same track that we run our Pack races on. I was the Chair for both (we won--another post) so I have empirical data on a couple of intersting topics. First, (and less interesting IMO), is the difference in track setup and speed variations. Exact same track. ...

Pinewood Daddy wrote:It should only take a few inches of travel to dive to the rail while the car is just starting to move.

That's true. When you start with the DFW 3/16" away from the rail and travel laterally at 2" per 4 feet, it should only take 4.5 inches to hit the rail.

We sweated it out for a few hours but Calvin won the Grand Finals in his District Pinewood Derby this past Saturday. Cal won Bears pretty easily. The Wolves went next and there was a boy from our Pack whose car was much quicker than Cal's (by 0.0277s). Knowing these two would face each other in the ...