My son Justis and his pinewood derby car...We need your help!

Use Krytox as your wheel lubricant, if you can find some. One drop at each wheel, then wipe the excess off. Slicker'n eel snot!

 

Some Hot Rodders and racers you guys are. Put a motor in it! If you're gonna get bounced, go out in style! Good luck.

 

I won one back in my youth polishing the crap out of the axles, inside of the wheels and using graphite powder. Cut the block like a wedge and spend all my time on making it fast.

 

Chuck a piece of pipe cleaner in your drill press and load it with graphite and run your wheels up and down while it's spinning. Easy way to polish the inside of your wheels.

 

go to bookstore & buy the book - it's got everything in it

 

My dad was tuff
I got no help, it was a principal thing with him. and not that he wasnt involved in my scouting, He was the leader for many years. It was up to me to win on my own merits.

I didnt come in first place, but i did dam good 3rd..and i beat alot of Father made cars, and that was justification enough for me.
I got better each year..2nd place the 2 years after

One of my cars had about a 1" hole drilled all the way thru it length wise and carved close to the Midget shape
we had the real skinny wheels back than

Let your kid build his own car, that way he is proud of himself, not proud of how you got him to the finish line
JM2C

 

I agree, somewhat - but show the kid this thread so he has a chance. I came in last place due to lack of a clue when building, pretty disappointing to find the mistakes I made much too late.

 

I let my son carve his own, using his imagination. I did help him with the wheels and axles. Like many of the previous posters,,,,,,,, Graphite and carefull placement of wheels is the trick.......... I thought it Cool when all the DAD built (really cool carved) cars flopped, and my son's block of wood spanked their asses !!

 

The rules for my son's pack stated that you had to use the zinc plated metal nails suppled with the kit for the axles. Nickel is harder and has less friction than zinc so we stripped the zinc and plated the nails with electroless nickel. My son chose his own design (Indy car), cut it out, sanded it and painted it himself. I did suggest where to place the weights. His car was fast and won the pack title. Lots of bummed fathers that built their kids car including one that built it in the R&D shop at work.

 

Thanks for the help

Sent via my Android phone using Tapatalk

 

These are mine from 1981/82. In Canada we called them Kub Kars.

The most HAMB friendly was the 'A' Roadster pickup, show class. It did make a couple runs down the track, but didn't have any weight added so not the fastest.

Orange was the 1981 model, chunk of lead in front of the rear axle. My fastest car.

Green car was 1982, had lead most of the length of the bottom & drilled out to meet weight.

Graphite powder on the wheels. Got f*#ed up one meet when a 'helpful' organizer oiled the axles of all the cars. We were able to get it cleaned up in time for the races.

 

My (plywood) track has burn marks on it from hotrodbob and his son's jet cars!

 

As a retired scout leader my sons and I have built and help build alot of pinewood cars. Every trick in the book has already been mentioned in this thread. So Justis, You and your dad have a great time building and racing your Hotrod....You are already a WINNER in my book...I am proud to say both of my sons are hotroders, Hambers and Eagle scouts...Keep up the work.

 

here are the ones we did this year.

 

Shape it like a capitol H The only way it will sit at the gate is half a car length ahead of the next car.

 

Gotta watch local rules,they have templates and stuff.Build it heavy and weigh it at the meet,drill out weights till it meets their scale weight.Best one I did was with all the goodies like wheel spacer templates and stuff,won the pack with it.Good luck and enjoy the time with your boy,they grow up fast!

 

put weight just behind front axel and then concaved the front axel and nose so it would slip off the starting pin first. but that was in 61 and
62 won first both years pack level.

 

and i know i need to dust but hey too many things in the shop to play with.

 

raise the mounting hole on 1 wheel, 3 wheels are faster than 4

 

me and my buddies have been talkin tonight. I think we are going to try to find an old track and have a derby night once a month. Anybody know of one for sale?

 

My sons and I have built many...we had one carved out to look like a bone, painted white and named "The Bone"...our other one that was faster was a simple dloped fron at about 30 degrees and smooth sanded.....THE TRICK......IS NOT GRAPHITE.....take 2 cars...one with graphite and the other one with armor all on the axles and wheel...let it dry overnight...spin the wheels on the 2 different cars....the armor all will spill like a top compaired to the graphite......without a doubt "THE TRICK"......also debur and polish the axles--I even smoothed and polished the tires on a drill press..............Let me know your results...TannerGang@aol.com

 

I bought an 8 lane aluminum track off of Craigslist last year for $200! It's 48' long, but I don't use it all as the track we race on is only 30' 6". I got it from a Boy Scout pack that upgraded and paid $2000 for a replacement. It need some help, but not near $1800 worth.

Here's a few from the last few years with my son:
A hot rod highboy truck
A Soap Box Derby car
His design
And my Dragster for the adult race this year.

Just a few other tips that I've done that help:
A further help for the 3 wheel touch; for the wheel that touches up front, bend that axle ever so slightly where the axle goes into the body. By rotating the axle you can now "steer" the car strait. Use a pair of pliers that the jaws are just wider than the hub width of the wheel so the part of the axle inside the wheel remains strait. Mark the head of the axle with a marker so you can reference a) which direction it is bent and b)how far you turned it. I put the bend strait down when installed in the car. Roll the car slowly and watch which way it veers. If it goes left-rotate the axle CW, if it goes right - rotate the axle CCW. Very SMALL adjustments will make big changes in direction. I usually roll the car at least 15-20 times fine tuning it.

I also undercut the nose of the car so that the point of the car that touches the stating gate is at least in the middle of the cars height, if not higher. Out track has a fall away starting gate that rotates down and away from the car. My car starts to move as soon as the gate moves. When the gate is at a 45 degree angle, my car is anywhere from an 1/8" to 3/8" ahead of the others that the contact point is on the very bottom. When races are decided by .001 second, that 1/8" might as well be a mile.

If allowed, I turn my wheels to be as light as possible. A lighter wheel will start to rotate faster that a heavy wheel. Think an aluminum race flywheel as opposed to a steel one.

An over looked area that is really easy to fix is setting the inside width of the tread to the width of the guide lane of the track, plus 1/8". This will stop the car from shimmying left and right going down the track. Most blocks of wood are set up to have an inside tread width of at least 3/8". Guide rail width varies from track to track, so you need to check your track.

All the other tips listed above I do as well.

 

You know that if you imbed rubber tire in that rear wheel (look in the toy dept at Wallyworld), you'll get MUCH better ET's!

 

My son is now 13, so these were from a few years ago, but both were kinda HAMB friendly. Performance-wise the belly tanker did better with a 3rd overall, but I believe he won the show part with the comp coupe and still placed in the top 10.

 

Is this real?

 

One thing that dad and I did is that we made sure the car would go straight. We built a small track out of plywood and put sides on it, then drew two lines that were straight down the plywood. Then put the car on the top and let it go down, if it didn't go straight we would turn an axle until it went straight, eventually the car went straight. When the car rubs on the sides of the track you lose a lot of speed. We also put the weight inside the car. We drilled holes and put weights that were circles in the holes. We also used a magic marker instead of paint so we had more weight that we could put where we wanted. Also since our scales and the packs scales were always a little bit different, we put tiny screws in the bottom so if we were over weight we could take a screw out, or under weight we could put a screw in. Matt

 

i helped a neighbors kid a few years ago. it's all about the axles and wheels. axle alignment too. we drilled smaller pilot holes for the axles with the body in a vice in my drill press. so they were all square to each other. swap the axles for smooth like was said and keep testing it, tapping the nails in till the wheels dont wobble. pencil lead for lube on sides of body and underside of nail head where wheel touches, and inside wheel. get the wheels/axles right and you could win without even carving the body.

 

As I recall from when my son did this (he is now 22 years old), don't worry about what the body of the car looks like. Go crazy, let your kid design it!! The speeds are so relatively low that aerodynamics don't really factor in. If you are hot on actually winning the race, YOU should concentrate on the wheels and axles. Make sure the wheels move freely, but do not wobble. Use some graphite on the axles. Try to make sure they turn smoothly. Use all the weights in the kit, but location on the car is not the determining factor. If you do your homework, That is what will win the race.

 

cruisin30, Great info. That is what it took for my son and daughter to win 4 out of 5 years at the local level. The axles, pins and wheels are the key to fast and consistent running. Dry lube is great as you don't have to reapply during the racing. I have found the predrilled blanks to be WAAAAY off. I use to fill them in and redrill the holes on a home made jig. I would cut and polish the "nails" with 1000 grit paper. Chamfer the wheel holes and round off the tread area then re-polish with 1000. It has to sit EXACTLY on all four tires. I would check it with a piece of rice paper. I would just let my kids do the bodies and paint them. Just make sure you have about 50% front to rear weight. Use a letter scale. Also check your side to side and wedge weights...ooopps that for a real race car. Then I would roll it across a glass table and make sure it rolled straight. The one race we lost was due to loose weight rubbing on the track.

 

Mine will pass tech. It will not sit in front of the other cars at the line, but will be let go first. You will have a car lenght running head start when they drop the pegs. FED style.