Derby Talk

Just curious to get a consensus of how much time is spent on average building a car. I say this because one of the dads says he had about 18 hours into the car, which seems excessive to me. I imagine our car this year (which we did in a hurry) we probably had under 6 hours invested. We did re-use wheels from an extra car from last year, but still had to re-dress them.

Also, please let me know if you're cars are competitive with that amount of time.

Interesting question!

Grandson visited 4 times.
First two visits, about 2 hours each, worked axles and wheels.
Third visit, about 2 hours, cut, sanded, and weighted car body.
Painted at home ... probably about an hour
Fourth visit, about an hour, bent axles, assembled car, aligned, showed off to Grandma.

Total: about 8 hours.

How competitive? To be determined Tuesday evening.

I've never kept too close accounting on time spent. My son usually builds 2 cars at the same time and then we select that fastest one based on testing. I've always thought about 10 hours was a reasonable estimate of actual work time.

birddog

If you know what you're doing it should only take about 1 hour each for axle and wheel prep. All that won't necessarily be in one block of time either. Getting all the axles polished probably takes the longest of those two steps. Depending on the car design, that can probably take up the most time if you have something with a lot of contours or details.

DerbyAddicted wrote:Just curious to get a consensus of how much time is spent on average building a car. I say this because one of the dads says he had about 18 hours into the car, which seems excessive to me. I imagine our car this year (which we did in a hurry) we probably had under 6 hours invested. We did re-use wheels from an extra car from last year, but still had to re-dress them.

Also, please let me know if you're cars are competitive with that amount of time.

Its going to factor into what they are doing and how.
paint. Sand. Paint. Takes up a large amount of time.
if you lack knowledge or are not very well set up. Then it can take a good amount of time.

I can share the following.

First few years. Took us about 8 to 16 hours.
much. Just not being set up or knowing what to do and how we did it.

Now as time went on. And everything was close buy and already set up.
then time was about 6 hours.

Then when you get to a high skill level and don't use paint. You can get down to 2 hour builds.

Sporty

sporty wrote:Then when you get to a high skill level and don't use paint. You can get down to 2 hour builds.

Sporty is definitely the outlier. He can pick up a sealed BSA kit, shake it a few times, open the box and roll out a car that will do sub-3 seconds on a 42 foot track.

Vitamin K wrote:

sporty wrote:Then when you get to a high skill level and don't use paint. You can get down to 2 hour builds.

Sporty is definitely the outlier. He can pick up a sealed BSA kit, shake it a few times, open the box and roll out a car that will do sub-3 seconds on a 42 foot track.

Well thanks. But it's not that easy..

Just lots of builds.

I spend about 30 minutes on body prep, which includes drilling axle holes and cutting, routing, sawing, chiseling, and/or dremeling weight locations (plus marking the block for these steps). Another 30-45 minutes for wheels and axles (including lubrication). Shaping the car can take between 30 seconds and a few hours, depending on the complexity. Hershey-bar shape = 30 seconds, an AH8TK-style car = several hours. Sanding and paint each take between 5 and 60 minutes, again depending on complexity, not counting primer/paint/clear coat dry time. So, all together, between 70 minutes for a super quick and easy build and as much time as you want to spend. I would guess that I typically spend about 2 hours of actual work time spread over 2 to 3 days.

I agree .. About am hour or so on 4 axles.( we did 9) Couple hours on wheels. Our car body this year was only 3 saw cuts. One on the table saw. 2 coped. Roughed out in 15 min. Sanding smooth took all the time. A slow hour or so. And an hour to drill axle holes ( i lined up jig..Scout ran the pin vise..( cautious)..I estimate 16 hrs total . Not counting me playing "cars"on the tuning table .
That's another 8.

I can build a 3 second car w/o paint in under 2.5 hours if everything is out and set up. When I work with my sons that time triples. We have won pack the last 3 years and have done well at district level. We share lots of information and are going to spend less time this year... so who knows how things will go.

Thanks for all the responses.

Maybe 4-5 hours. We do 3 at a time so averaged it probably less.
Noskills

A few of my cars, I've built in as little as 1-2 hours. Most are probably in the 5-10 hour range. A few are in the 20-30 hour range, maybe more, especially if you include time spent on research, experimentation, and sourcing parts/supplies.

However, my focus is on the appearance of my cars. With only a few exceptions, they've been in the middle of the pack for speed.

I would guess that most of the kids in our derby build their cars in 2-4 hours, spread over the course of 2-4 workshops. Some have spent much less, others I'm sure spend much more. One year, one of the speed winners spent less than an hour total (actually, about half an hour), and most of that was using the bench sander to create an irregular shape.

DerbyAddicted wrote:Just curious to get a consensus of how much time is spent on average building a car. I say this because one of the dads says he had about 18 hours into the car, which seems excessive to me. I imagine our car this year (which we did in a hurry) we probably had under 6 hours invested. We did re-use wheels from an extra car from last year, but still had to re-dress them.

Also, please let me know if you're cars are competitive with that amount of time.

According to down and derby

You need to build multiple car.

DO you add the time for just the final car are all of the ones for testing

It usually takes me about 24 hours to build a simple wedge, 3 wheel rail rider, stock wheelbase and trying to follow all the laws of Physics. A lot of the time is spent staring at the bores through that little magnifying glass I purchased from Derby Evolution. My team took 1st place last Saturday at the Pack race. We'll see what happens at the District race in March.

Our First ever 4 wheel rail rider. So far we have 154 hours, 13 minutes, and 25 seconds but we're still working on the car so I don't know what the future will bring. This particular race involves a Pack other than mine. The race is not until February 23, in the evening, so we have a little time left. More info at a much later date.