Hi Parents,
Is your son or daughter building a Pinewood Derby car this year or thinking about it for Boy Scouts or Royal Rangers?
Well, both of my boys are in Royal Rangers and this is our 3rd year at the races coming up next weekend. Every year, as a single mom and feeling totally out of my element building race cars, I continue to learn new tips and tricks and thought it would be a good idea to share my learnings with other parents who might be new to the Derby or looking for ways to improve your car performance.
The 1st year, both boys did well and went on to compete at the district level and the key learnings from the first year were:
- Design Counts - the shorter the height the better!
- Weights are Key - keep adding and deleting weights to get right at the 5.0 or 6.0 gram maximum (depends on your org regulations - but always strive to hit the max allowable weight) - you can even just add a screw or two into in the bottom or drill a hole as a quick way to add or delete a small amount of weight.
- Graphite is a MUST! I don't think it is possible to use too much graphite - so prior to every race I load up the graphite on the wheels and axels.
- Don't forget to do a practice run! - Before the race, it is a good idea to do a few trial runs on a smooth surface to see if your car is rolling straight or not and if not - take out your screwdriver and slightly adjust the axel screws (just a half turn usually is enough) and then keep running test drives until the car rolls straight.
2nd year key learnings:
- Weight placement - it is critical to drill out the bottom of the car and glue or screw the weights into the bottom of the car so nothing is dragging to slow down the car.
- Thinness of the wheels matters - ok - we learned the hard way by spending more than 10 hours slowly shaving and polishing the wheels to get them as thin as possible - read on....
3rd year learnings:
- It is legal to buy the already shaved wheels and you can save yourself hours of time!
- Find friends that have power tools and enjoy building to help you out!
Thank you so much Grandpa and Paul! :-)
For more Pinewood Derby Tips or to order supplies from the pros check out these websites:
1) Scoutarama
3) Pinewood Derby Rules & Kits
4) DerbyChamp
Well...be sure to check back next week to see how my boys did at the races!
Good luck on your cars and be sure to comment if you have any Derby tips to share!
Julie
aka: Derby Mom
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