Not great, but good enough

[pgosselin]

Hi all,

A big round of thanks to everyone one Derby Talk. Over the last three years your input has been invaluable to my and my youngest son's Pinewood Derby experience. A special round of thanks to tkp this year, who was kind enough to share some of his tips for racing on a SuperTrack brand Pinewood Derby track.

Last night we participated in our last Pack Pinewood Derby and emerged victorious with my son Jon's third Pack Championship trophy. Although I wasn't happy with our builds this year (I felt like we regressed a little), they were still good enough to take top honors in his new Pack.

As I have mentioned in other posts, we moved last summer from Louisville to a suburb just north of Indianapolis. This created a number of new challenges for us. First, most of my workshop is still boxed up in the basement. (It will take some time before we get fully settled in.) Also, our new Pack and District had very different equipment and rules. We went from racing on a Piantadosi aluminum track with center guide rails to a plastic SuperTrack with no center guide rail. And where we were allowed to extend the wheelbase at our old Pack, we had to use a standard wheelbase and the slots with our new Pack. That meant that some of our speed tips (rail running, extended wheel base, moving weight as far back as possible in the car) were rendered null and void.

However, we could still use a lot of the knowledge we had gleaned from DerbyTalk in our new builds. This year, we built 4 cars using up some slotted tungsten rounds I had left in my Pinewood box. We built two 1/4" thick bodies (similar to the styles that Sporty and tkp) race with COMs of 5/8" in front of the rear axle. We build one wedge-shaped body with a COM of 3/4". And we built a dog bone/hourglass shaped body similar to our regional-winning car last year. It had a lot of wood still on it and a COM of 1" in front of the rear axle. I put a -2 degree cant on all of the rear wheels, except for the dog bone/hourglass body which I didn't cant at all.

I must not have drilled the axle holes into the slots cleanly enough, because I ended up in alignment hell, having to bend axles to get all the cars aligned. Once I had them all aligned on the tuning board, we then did a little track testing and all of the aggressive COM's had serious death wiggle. I was disappointed, because I had hoped our skills had improved to the point that we could go with a more aggressive COM. The car that was the most stable was the dog bone/hourglass car with all the extra wood and 1`" COM. Where I think we failed on the more aggressive COM cars was on the axle hole drilling and the slotted rounds. On a standard wheelbase car, they also stick up out of the top of the car if you go 1/4" thick. I think the weight may have been too high in the car. Using tungsten cubes lower in the car might have given them a little more stability. This is all speculation.

Anyhow, after racing our two strongest cars on the SuperTrack a week prior to the race, the dog bone/hourglass car was definitely the most stable on the table, so we decided to go with it.

Even during the race last night, I noticed that it still had a little wiggle down the flat portion of the track. I don't know if I still had some issues with alignment of if this is a quirk of the SuperTrack because it's missing the center rail--you eventually drift into a side. I know the car tracks straight as an arrow on a tuning board, both with and without the front wheels on. Still, it was good enough that Jon won every heat except his second to last. Jon's average score during the finals was a 3.0764. The next closest car had an average of 3.09 something and the rest were all 3.1 or above.

So while the car might have been a bit of a let down to us, we got enough of the small things right (straight alignment, good COM, axles and wheel bore prep) that we were able to outshine the competition. It was a great swan song for my son, made all the sweeter because I had set his expectations low before the race. We had a suspicion that the car wasn't as fast as our past cars and we were racing on an unfamiliar track type. We had decided to just enjoy the event, no matter what happened. Imagine his surprise when he won the whole thing again.

Guess it's off to districts. Again, we're going to keep our expectations low. My son already has a nice collection of trophies, an understanding of what knowledge combined with hard work can accomplish, and a lot of great memories he will carry around with him the rest of his life.

Here are some photos of our winning car. And one of my son enjoying a glass of milk, like the victors at the nearby Indy 500.

Again, thanks for all the help over the years.

Paul

http://s1134.beta.photobucket.com/user/ ... 9.jpg.html
http://s1134.beta.photobucket.com/user/ ... 2.jpg.html
http://s1134.beta.photobucket.com/user/ ... c.jpg.html
http://s1134.beta.photobucket.com/user/ ... 8.jpg.html

[sporty]

Congrats. got milk !


A win is a win, weather by a mile or a inch ! lol


its not easy to do a fast stock wheel base car with slots. at a scout level, i found out of 30 scouts and parents, that only 5 could do it well.

Sporty

[pgosselin]

Congrats. got milk !


A win is a win, weather by a mile or a inch ! lol


its not easy to do a fast stock wheel base car with slots. at a scout level, i found out of 30 scouts and parents, that only 5 could do it well.

Sporty

Thanks Ryan,

Your advice has been invaluable over the last three years. I should have gone with the tungsten cubes in the more aggressive COM cars like you recommended to me on those flat body styles. I didn't want to have to unbox the Dremel. It seemed easier to just drill a hole for the tungsten round. Mistake. We used your wheel bore and axle prep method. I'm sure that's one of the things we did better than everyone else. We also drilled holes in the slots with the Pro Body Tool. That helped. I just wish I had read the post about expoying the slots first. Didn't do that. It might have saved me from some of the alignment nightmare.

By the way, it looked like he was winning by about 4 inches each heat. I just know we could have done it by a full body length if we had gotten some other things right. I hope that doesn't sound greedy. We were trying to compete with ourselves. We wanted to be better skill wise than we were last year, and I don't think we were. Another year or two and we would have been.

Oh well, sharing Pinewood Derby with my boys has been a great experience over the years. I'll never forget it. Neither will they.

Paul

[Noskills]

The celebratory glass of milk is the big win.
Congrats.
Seth

[pgosselin]

The celebratory glass of milk is the big win.
Congrats.
Seth

Thanks, Noskills. Completely his idea, and I think he was aware of the significance, too. Very smart and creative kid.

Paul

[rpcarpe]

Congrats!

Maybe you'll end up on the 'rules committee' and help them allow more creativity and speed in the cars?

And good luck on getting your workshop in order... I knew I took about 6 months just to get mine where I liked being there.

[pgosselin]

Congrats!

Maybe you'll end up on the 'rules committee' and help them allow more creativity and speed in the cars?

And good luck on getting your workshop in order... I knew I took about 6 months just to get mine where I liked being there.

Thanks rpcarpe,

You know, I was going to be on the "rules committee" for Louisville, but had to give it up because we moved. I do love Pinewood, so who know, I might end up on the rule committee here. Some of the members are actually in my sons' Troop.

Paul