Derby Talk

If your rules allow I would definitely use them. That's the problem: our rules do not allow any axles besides BSA axles, and after some conversations and brief inspection of one particular car, I strongly suspect that he is running something other than BSA axles, such as plated (or stainless) axles...

If I might throw in my .02....... IMHO, any test track to compare times or just eyeball speeds of two cars will net you a faster car. I ran our cars on our homebuilt 32' track, then ran them on a 42' Bestrack, calculated the difference, and was able to use that "correction factor" to estim...

How about this?

http://www.hangar-9.com/Products/Defaul ... ID=HANU906" target="_blank


or this one, it's cheaper and comes in CHROME:

http://www.monokote.com/trim.html" target="_blank

Yes, I built a test car. What I saw was every .1 grams removed is about .006 seconds more or less on my track. I used the bench lathe to lighten the wheels, but I did not test a bone stock wheel as a baseline. I started with a trued/coned wheel first. I should try a couple of the really out of round...

Laserman, I do not own a hand lathe but I do have an older benchtop metal lathe. You do not need a lathe of any sort if you are willing to purchase several sets of wheels to check. I bought twelve sets of various colors at our Scout shop. THREE wheels out of the 48 checked at .0005 runout, so those ...

Sir, I was not able to watch all the video content you have provided. The videos display with quite a bit of chop. I found it hard to see what you are trying to show. The video on rear wheel dominance played better. My take away message from that so far is that toe in on both rears = BAD! That car a...

I would suggest, if it is allowed under your rules, that if you build a RR car that you might shave off 1/16" or so on the body where the DFW mounts and provide adequate clearance for the front of the DFW where it comes close to the body with the bent axle. You want to shave off the 1/16 to kee...

I get my balsa at a hobby store near my work. They are heavy into RC airplanes and stock a ton of gear. There's probably one like that near you? If not, I pm'd you a link to their online store.

Thanks for the compliment! I think it could have been quicker, we left the COM at 1 1/4". I think we could have shortened it up more had we used tungsten instead of the plain cheapo steel weights. The weights you see in the pic go all the way to the rear of the car, we couldn't slide them back ...

I ask, because when I help my son make his next car, I want him to be able to create the design that he wants (in terms of looks), but since I know that he wants to win as well, I want to help him choose a fast design as well. I wanted to share my own thought on this. When my son's first Derby came...