Featured Art & Inspiration Pinewood Pride

Amazing. An era prior to plastic models.
Thanks Joey

 

Man that’s gotta be a one off masterpiece or we’d all be running up the price on new old stock of the kits lol

Very very cool.

 

I did the Pinewood Derby when I was a kid. When everyone was making copies of a Watson Indianapolis roadster, I made a car that was about half the weight of the others. I .worked on the wheels and axles to make sure they ran free. I thought a lightweight car would run faster with less friction. My car pre-dated the first rear engine cars at Indy and I believe I was the inspiration for them
I was proven right in the first heat, when I smoked the competition. In the second heat I drew a different lane and I got high centered on the guide strip and DNFed. The track was clearly out of spec but all my protests were unjustly dismissed.
I'm still bitter after 67 years.

 

hard to believe that lighter would be better in this situation!(track surface notwithstanding)

 

WOWSERS what a cool wooden model! Hopefully you can pass it along to one of your kids or grandkids! The details are amazing and the scuffing on the bottom shows how much it was played with. Yeah my pinewood car never looked so good but yeah it got put together with a little help from the old man. I went on to get my Webelow badge and the cool wolf head kerchief ring but that's as far as I went some 50+ years ago.

 

I disagree, but we will never know the answer to that because the experiment was stopped short by a defective track and short sighted race officials. If I had been allowed a re-start on a suitable lane I am convinced I would have won and that it would have been an inflection point in Pinewood Derby technology. Sadly, we will never know what might have been.

 

That is really neat!!

Hey, @J.Ukrop have ya ever checked out the Ace Models of Merit wooden models from the late 1940's/early 1950's? They produced a handful of hot rods.

 

Wood Hot Rods rule! Pretty sure I’ve posted this in the “Antiquated” section on here. A knot free section of a 2x4 and some Hobby Lobby type wood wheels and some spare time, and another Hot Rod rolls down the road.

 

whoa those rule!

 

hansboomer, my son did the exact thing, thinking lighter was better, got eliminated in the first round. Next year, we had access to a laboratory scale that could weigh a pin and his car was the heaviest he could make it according to the rules. He finished it off beautifully and even rubbed the paint out. When he got to the competition the judge that was weighing the cars was using some rusty old postal scale and announced that it was too heavy and started drilling 1/4" holes all over the car to comply with what his scale said and ruined the car. Talk about being pissed off, my son would have killed him if he could!

 

This is my pinewood derby car from 1981. My son [who's 51 now] threw his away years ago but the parents got to enter they're own car. I think I was eliminated because I cut the wheels/tires down to skinnys. Great fun!

 

Here’s the ones the boys and I built

 

My son made a copy of his grandfathers car, a 1928 Ford model A. It was full fendered with sheetmetal fenders, kind of an H shape and screwed under the block of wood. It was way too heavy, but they let him run it anyway. The middle portion of the fenders dragged on all but one track. (There were four lanes)



Next was his son who wanted a dragon from Minecraft shown here. He won one race out of four.

The next grandson heard the story, and maybe saw the Model A version his dad made, so he wanted to make my daily driver. A black, first gen Ridgeline. It looked amazingly like one and had chrome tape windows. He also only won one race of four. He could have picked my 68 Chrysler or 1970 MGB to build, but he wanted the Honda.

sorry, no photos of the other two.

 

I built this roadster about 30 years ago, intended to finish the wheels someday. I have my pinewood derby cars from the 70’s somewhere around the house.

 

Cool stuff guys. When I was a Cub Scout we didn’t do pinewood derby, however my next youngest brother did. His 1st one looked like a 50s Indy car, the second one like a 70s Indy car. My two sons each built 2. Both would be off topic. We used 45 cal bullets for weight and a good scale. Drill the lead out to get to 5oz exactly IIRC.
I was a Cub Master for both my boys. Great fun. Somewhere along the line a bunch of us Cubmasters realized that the Dads were often times doing most of work instead of supervising, I was guilty. We decided to have a dads or moms class and allow the kids to do as much as their skill level allowed. I built a 32 3 window fenders and all, not sure where it is.
I encourage anyone to get involved with Pinewood cars COOL stuff!
@J.Ukrop that is the coolest pinewood car I’ve ever seen.
Dan

 

I helped my middle son with his Pinewood Derby car. He did the work, I did the thinking for him. He chamfered the inside of the wheels where they met the axle, beveled the front wheels to about 1/16 " wide at the center, and put a metal slug where the steering wheel would have gone. He won several runs until another kid had a car with very wobbly wheels, jumped the track forcing my son's car off of the track causing my son to lose. My son wanted a rerun, but it was not allowed. My son was not happy. Here it is about 40 years later, and my son still has his racer, but he is still pissed off about how he lost.

 

The Pinewood Derby, is a good introduction for a kid, to the real world…with all the overly helpful fathers not actually following the rules.

 

Working in the gray area if the rules don't say you can't then you can! Racer logic 101.

 

Yep, my son and I won the first year but got disqualified by the "judges" because our car was too awesome for a kid to make. I can't help it if those lame Dads didn't know shit about how to help their kid. Ah, anyway, we won the best-looking entry instead. A quasi f1/Indy design. It ain't cheatin if ya don't get caught.

 

The judges gave one of ours the stink eye.
Was overheard saying a kid didn’t do this.

he was half correct. The kid sanded and shaped it. I took it to work and we shot BASF on it.
I guess the other dads should work at a body shop

 

Talking about racing with my son,a few 100000 times,I raced real cars a lot,and he whatched;tell he was old enough,when I got him a real racecar. But that jumps way ahead,of his Pinewood car.=He wanted to do it!!,so talked about free rolling and aero,did homework looking up info on what was then a new limited internet. Talk over design,and I built him a test track*,to spec of BS. So had to have test car too race with him too. Turned into a thing,were some of his buddys who were not even in scouts,also built cars an there dads too. The other Dads would bring beer n chips,an on wensday nights it was race time after dinner "better then the crap on TV anyway,all had fun.
I owned a speedshop an balanced engine,so had a GM. scale we could use.
Now all this going on,refinded the kids racers and the dads as well,to the point= The scout kids an racer from our neighborhood all wiped out,all other Scouts< Was not just a little faster,but gaps of ahead like 1/4 track lead+ above those who did not have test track at there home . Ya,my son won over all Bear's Cubscouts,then was ask if he wanted to race the older 4th n 5th graders. He out ran all of them as well.
Hay,Dad,did we cheet? { Someone of older boys told him that} "We read the rules together,and was nothing that said anything about having a test track, you didn't brake any rules at all. They could of done,every thing you did,but did not"
That's Racing!!!!
The neighborhood keep using the test track for a few weeks after the scout meet,tell the hood starteed building puchcars they could ride in,and after that was custom pedalbikes{ I welded a lot of crazy things together for our hood kids=Ton of fun. A few years later every one became homemade go cart crazy. +

 

Mine is inspired by the Graffiti coupe

 

Grill shell looks better on yours

 

Most rules have a 5 ounce max weight specification. One local delicatessen had a scale set up for the kids to use.

I had a scale at work that we used to measure bulk lathe parts, easier than counting. It was extremely accurate.

The Cub Scout troop used a dietary scale with only one digit past the ounce unit. The rest were taped off. The cars my kids entered weighed 5.09 ounces.

I'd take care of the wheel and weight. My kids did almost anything else. One year my one son dominated the blue and gold events, plus the overall races.

 

you guys were true craftsman to build those so cool. I remember pinewood in Scouts but never took any pictures. I did later in life take all my car trophies to BSA and gave them away to be used for awards at the Pinewood Derby. They love the big size and just made new plaques for the bases. I would take a trunk load and drop them off they were amazed. My wife always hated dusting those things anyway.

 

I did a similar thing when I was in scouting, circa 1965. I used some lead bullets from my dad's gunsmithing supplies to get the weight of the car right at the maximum. However, I put them in the back of the car with the blunt ends sticking out to simulate exhaust pipes. It looked cool but didn't do so well in the races. After the competition was done I tried running it down the track backwards so the weight of the bullets was forward, and it seemed to go faster.

I built two different cars during my time in scouting, they're still sitting on the shelf right above my computer as I type this.

Back then all the cars were pretty basic. We had to use the wood block that came in the kit that was generally designed to resemble a front engine Indy roadster, and there wasn't much of the high tech tricks like seems to be the norm today. I did 90% of the work on my cars by myself, with my dad mostly just providing advice; it drives me slightly nuts to see the cars today that were obviously built by the dads with minimal work by the scout. I've heard of some troops that will have a separate race for cars built by the dads, which may help keep them from meddling with the kid's cars.