2014 Den and Pack Champion

[DerbyAddicted]

Hi all. Been lurking all season absorbing as much info as I could. Last year, we won Den and took second in the Pack with a 4 wheel wedge.

Saturday, we had our Derby and we won ALL our races, and set a new track record!



The car weighed in at 4.9 ounces. It's weighted with 3/8 lead wire with a COM 1 1/8". It's a 3 wheel, rail rider (supposed to be anyway) with the left wheel being DFW and using graphite as a lubricant. We ran on a 35' Best Track with a Champ timer.

Heat 1 2.5961
Heat 2 2.5938
Heat 3 2.5756
Heat 4 2.6016
Heat 5 2.6167
Heat 6 2.6089
Avg. 2.5988

Final 1 2.6034
Final 2 2.6335
Final 3 2.5971
FInal 4 2.5839
Avg. 2.6045

[Vitamin K]

Congrats! Nice to see people winning with "just" lead.

[TXDerbyDad]

Congratulations! Those are very good times on a 35' track. Have any side profile shots of the car?

[DerbyAddicted]

Congratulations! Those are very good times on a 35' track. Have any side profile shots of the car?

Thanks. Now that you've said that you have me doubting the track length. lol

[Scrollsawer]

Nice car! My twins would love the melting Creeper design.

Scrollsawer

[Noskills]

The car weighed in at 4.9 ounces. It's weighted with 3/8 lead wire with a COM 1 1/8".

Nice planning...you have saved some room to improve next year with a 5 oz car with a more aggressive COM.

Also I must concur with Scrollsawer, love the melting creeper!

Congrats,

Noskills

[DerbyAddicted]

Thanks for the compliments. The melting creeper was a last minute change. Originally, we was going to mimic Scrollsawer's design from last year (http://i50.tinypic.com/2ly0g0h.jpg" target="_blank), but I screwed up on the wheelbase. So, I used another body we were working on and ran with it. The green was darker than we would have liked, but what are you going to do? After the fact, I think it would have been cool if the black was flat, but the green was the high gloss. I think that would have been a cool effect.

We def. plan on being more aggressive with the COM next year. We have the tungsten cubes, and there are some other ideas I have as well. As far as being 4.9 oz, that was my son. I was busy working the computer for the races when he checked in, and even though I gave him tungsten putty with a .1 oz ball pulled off, he thought 4.9 was "good enough". Fortunately, he was right.

[birddog]

Congrats! Nice car and very good times. Anytime you can get below 2.6 seconds on a 35' best track, you know you have a fast car.

birddog

[jcp420xx]

Congratulations! Those are very good times on a 35' track. Have any side profile shots of the car?

Thanks. Now that you've said that you have me doubting the track length. lol

With a Best Track at a minimum you have the 7' drop, a 3' curve, a 7' timer section and a 4' run-off giving you 21'. Then you add 2 or 3 more 7' flat sections between the curve and the timer giving you either a 35' or a 42' track. Where the confusion comes in is that the actual racing distance from pin to timer is 6' shorter as you lose a foot where the cars start, lose another foot after the timing lights and lose 4 more feet to the run-off section. Because of that a 35' track has a racing distance of 29' while a 42' track has a racing distance of 36'. Winning times on a 35/29 track tend to be around 2.52 while winning times on a 42/36 will get under 3.1.

[Speedster]

That 29' racing distance is correct. That is exactly our racing distance at District. A 2.60 on the Best track was a winning time for our track. No one came close to a 2.52. That car had to be a rocket. The times Derby Addicted posted were very close to the times I've seen posted on our track. In fact, some of his times were never reached on our track.
CONGRATULATIONS on your Teams win.

[jcp420xx]

That 29' racing distance is correct. That is exactly our racing distance at District. A 2.60 on the Best track was a winning time for our track. No one came close to a 2.52. That car had to be a rocket. The times Derby Addicted posted were very close to the times I've seen posted on our track. In fact, some of his times were never reached on our track.
CONGRATULATIONS on your Teams win.

We have had some problems with over-competitive parents bending and/or breaking the rules (mostly in the form of purchasing professionally prepared kits and in one case a complete car) to get those times but my own children have been hitting those times as well and it mostly comes down to drilling perfectly aligned axle holes (our pack purchased a jig for that purpose) and spending an hour or two obsessively sanding and polishing the axles to get them perfect. They way I get my son into spending so much time on the axles and wheels is by bringing the drill press inside the house for a week and so he can sit down and take his time, 10 or 20 minutes a night, comfortably working in a warm room. If I had to drag him out to my unheated garage to work there I'd be lucky get more more than 5 minutes out of him.

[Speedster]

Are you allowed Oil? We have to use the original slots, graphite only.

[DerbyAddicted]

Are you allowed Oil? We have to use the original slots, graphite only.

Don't think it was directed at me, but this was a graphite only car.