Derby Talk

We are not required to use the stock axle slots, only to maintain the stock distance. I was planningon taking some wood out of the back too. But it would seem to me based on the responses so far that maintaining the 7" lenth, regardless of the wheel base is important to speed. Correct? :?: The...

I believe physics tells us B would be faster, since the weight is concentrated more especially in the curve. Think about a weighted ball being swung around at the end of a string. Now think about more of a weighted stick swinging at the end of the same string. The ball will produce more velocity. Ho...

We had that exact same problem with this design: http://derbytalk.com/viewtopic.php?t=1185 We didn't notice it wasn't registering at the finish line reliabily until after Districts but learned another lesson that day- high mounted thin wings don't always trip the beam! That is really a suprise that...

Your design looks somewhat simular to what we do, however we still use the tungsten cubes. What we do is just glue on 3/32" of balsa on the bottom which drops the weight of the cubes below the axel. For gluing on the front we just use Gorilla glue which has been strong enough where we have not ...

I also agree. As long as your secure with how you have polished the axels and bores and have good wheels spin times do not matter. My fastest cars have had the shortest spin times on the wheels since the wheels were lighter.

When I get my wife's camera I will post some pictures. It actually worked out ideally. For a portion of the time we were riding on two wheels with the front dominant wheel in the air just enough to guide us along the track. It was just odd that it did not happen until it was about 3/4ths of the way ...

Right now our new cars are in lock up for a display for the school. I will take some pictures of them and last years cars and post. We just looked at some pictures at the event and good thing we where riding the rail, about three fourths of the way down the cars lifted slightly and finished on just ...

We just got back from our derby last night and the boys were able to bring home a bunch of hardware: First in Tiger, Bear, Webelos, one first in design (no clue how we got that one!) and the pack championship. It was cool seeing three brothers race against each other for the championship. The real s...

[quote="PWD_addict"] I'd like to remove that stipulation but the other Leaders would want to know why and I don't want to explain how rail riding can provide a benefit to the Dads and Moms of the boys my sons will be competing with. :wink: quote] By these rules, technically nothing can be ...

For a test track we got the 32" two lane wood Quality Track. A good value for the money. We have no timers, what we do is race the car against last years pack champion car and judge from there. That is why we don't know exact times but know if the car is a half a length faster, etc. We tried wa...

Extending the wheelbase has been shown to ease the alignment problem, but the short wheelbase is actually faster. (The weight of the front wheels are uphill longer, thus more potential energy.) We also agree that a short wheelbase (especially one where the back wheels are pushed back) should be fas...

If your getting a test track you will be amazed on how the little adjustments can lead to big changes in time. I honestly was not a believer with rail riding until this year and we have buildt 6 rail riding cars (several kids racing). It just took us a while to be able to accurately align our cars. ...

We were one of the couple of people that tried out rail riding early on last year when Warp started talking about it. We rebuilt a car for districts and it was actually slower than if we would of left it off the rail. However, this year with some extra testing we are finding success. Here is what we...

We use the same one but the 8" model since we are building a 7" car. We were amazed on how much use this tool got over out building season.

Water does wonders. I would always try that first. Most of the time it works unless you have really made a huge axel hole.