Derby Talk

Until I see a better video on how to build a competitive car, I will be pointing people to this video. I consider this a must watch video for novice builders.


https://youtu.be/

That was the shortened version of the video that BSA promotes in the January 2015 edition of Boy's Life Magazine.

Here's the original video:


https://youtu.be/

Top builders can and have picked at this video on some of the details, however, I still consider it the best video that I have seen. A novice racer can watch this video and build a competitive car for their local race. To me, that is the most important thing.

Until I see a better video, I'll sticky this one.

Didn't realize that Boy's Life one was a re-edited version. Thanks for sharing. This has been the hands down go to video that I have linked to for other scout parents. Now I will start using the shorter version. I have been debating whether or not to actually show the video during our upcoming derby workshop solely for the simplified explanation of friction.

I think it's a good video, overall. I wish he'd left out the CO2 stuff...distracting.

One thing I'm a little bit leery of is the treatment of bent axles and railriding. It just seems to me like, if you're gonna do that, you need more information to get it right than the 90 seconds that video spends on it. I'd almost rather just tell them "look up rail riding if you want to take your speed up a notch after these other techniques you've done."

Also, relying on an 80(!) dollar tool to get bent axles is not accessible to your typical casual builder.

Vitamin K wrote:One thing I'm a little bit leery of is the treatment of bent axles and railriding. It just seems to me like, if you're gonna do that, you need more information to get it right than the 90 seconds that video spends on it. I'd almost rather just tell them "look up rail riding if you want to take your speed up a notch after these other techniques you've done."

The problem with any short video is that it won't go into detail about the various points that it outlines. People should really look at this video as an overview. Of course, there is a lot more to it when you start digging further.

Vitamin K wrote:Also, relying on an 80(!) dollar tool to get bent axles is not accessible to your typical casual builder.

Of course, you don't need such a tool to bend an axle or drill an angled hole if you go with straight axles. People can find ways to DIY bent axles and drill angled holes and save their money for other things. The hard part is doing it accurately and repeatably. Some people are willing to pay for a tool that accomplishes that for them, with minimal effort. Personally, I bought one of the axle benders and made it available to anyone that wanted to use it at the Awana workshops that we hosted.

I still qualify the video when I share it to ignore the bent axle part, I will show them a better way if they would like to know.

This video isn't bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml-oUf2 ... 72&list=WL

Randy-

Thanks for posting this. I had forgotten how good it was. I my view, this is the best video out there, by far. Nothing else even comes close.

I've just posted it to my pack's web site under the pinewood derby section as well.

My son watched it this week with me and enjoyed it and maybe even learned a little physics without realizing it!

birddog

I agree with Birddog. Until I see something else, this video hits >80% of the items needed for a newcomer to make a car materially faster, and isn't that the whole point? If it accomplishes that feat, and provides some fundamental physics learnings (while not boring folks to tears), then it's a 'win-win'.

Scrollsawer