BSA PWD Wheel Comparison Chart

[murphken]

This summary is for BSA Wheels purchased last year up to early December. Late December I purchased 100 wheel/axle kits from internet Scout Shop and all were bad. Might have gotten a pro racer's cast off. Hard to say. The lot code never changes. The clean-up sizes should be pretty close as I cut lots of wheels.

[murphken]

Since I posted the chart, there definitely is a new lot of wheels in circulation from BSA and they are not of good quality. Everybody knows about wheel wiggle. Well, in general many of the wheels from the new lot "oscillate" and have to be discarded. Wiggle is "back and forth" when rotating on a pin gage. Oscillation is almost like a warped version of wiggle.
If the wheels, from the batch, don't oscillate, they suffer from severe radial runout. Many of the mold numbers have to be cut hard and clean-up around 1.1730". That is a lot of material.
Overall a rough batch of wheels that are wearing old Murph out. Luckily, I have many wheels from the previous good batches.
Each mold # has its own personality. Sounds weird but I cut lots of wheels. I will call the Scout Shop in about a month when things settle down and see when a new lot of wheels might be available.
I can tell you that PWD racing is alive and well. I am about ready to sleep for a couple of weeks. This might be my last year selling at this pace as I want to concentrate on building tube audio amps. I will probably keep my equipment because I have tooling for other things I do.
I quit pro racing over 11 years ago, gave away the recipe for D-1 and hopefully, raised the bar on pinewood derby wheels and axles. Murph will be totally moving away from pinewood derby.

[FatSebastian]

Wiggle is "back and forth" when rotating on a pin gage. Oscillation is almost like a warped version of wiggle.

Like a bent rim on an actual car?

I can tell you that PWD racing is alive and well.

Good to hear!

This might be my last year selling at this pace ... Murph will be totally moving away from pinewood derby.