We had a dad race one year with a $10 buy in that went to the troop. We had to cut it short, I got knocked out late. There were about 8 cars entered. I still have mine... and most of my kid's cars.
I built these two with my boys. The black roadster won overall two years in a row. Polished axles, lotsa graphite, weight right on the money. They are now Boy Scouts, and I miss this stuff…
Every year the same dads showed up with cars THEY built for their kids. Of course they were grossly overweight. The best one I saw was one kid poster-painted his car out of the box. He and the dad assembled the car on race day at the venue. The dad looked like he just got off the train from work. No tricks, no finesse. The car went a couple of rounds then it was knocked out.
The year before my two sons were eligble to race we watched the races. After the races I casually inspected the track. Small retractible pins protruded up through the lanes on the starting line and I casually placed a 3x5 card against the pins and pressed an impression of the pin into the card. Next year we showed up with two cars. One had a "wing" in the front that was just a few thou lower than the top of the pin. A tunnel was carved out down the center of the car such that when the pin retracted the car clearly started rolling before its competitors, putting a significant hole shot on them. That one made it to the finals before the winner "caught him in the lights". The other had weight in the rear of the car, placing the CG as high as possible (still @ legal weight). That one also went rounds. Fun times Good memories.
Back in the 70's, all three of my oldest sons were involved in scouting. I am all thumbs with most things scouting, but building big cars or Pinewood Derby cars was something could do well. I had the boys do the work with my oversight. Which worked out well. We had most of the cubs at our house, building various cars. All weighed with a postal scale to not exceed 5 ounces. My sons and other cubs in the group of cub builders at my house always did very well. Five ounces exactly, when alignment and tapping the wheel centers so that a piece of all thread could be used to chuck the wheels in a drill to true and have all 4 wheels exactly round and not plastic tree stubs remaining did wonders! By threading the hub holes, we inadvertently gave a path to allow graphite to maintain lubrication all the down the race track. The wheel alignment, truing all 4 wheels to be round and exactly the same diameter made drastic differences in the cars performance. After a viewing couple years, I had just about all the cubs in our pack at my house, building their cars along with my three sons. I figured that I wasn't much good at other's cub scout fabrication, but could built good race cars, either real or 5 ounce wood ones. We even did an open comp addition to raise money for the cub scouts. It was all out, no rules except for wheels and spacing. Weight was up to the builder and that lead to a 3 pound limit the second year. Charging the adults a ten dollar entry fee helped finance the cub pack and we filled our church hall with both scouts and adults every year! Lots of fun and lasting memories, not to mention all the trophies over the years! All three of my older sons are in their 50's now and still recall those days fondly! Just for fun, one year, I entered my open comp adult division with a 40 Ford coupe, mostly made of Balsa, to keep it at 5 ounces. I was protested but the scales read 5 ounces. I hope cubs are still doing that very fun activity today!
Me and another dad did a clinic one year regarding pine cars. Some kids had no dad, or the dads had no mechanical skills to fall back on. I was selling pine cars on eBay 25 years back and was getting $40 to $60 for them. They were pretty much plug and play. Some were winners.
You can do a very simple experiment to prove to yourself whether or not weight increases acceleration by dropping two objects and seeing which one lands first.
I did the PWD cars when I was a young Scout, never was competitive, but the cars looked cool. When my boys were Scouts, I was in leadership. We (The leaders) would set up build days where I would open my shop to any scouts that wanted to take advantage of the facilities/expertise. The last couple of build days we would set up the track to allow test and tune runs. No timing was set up during T&T nights. Our rules were 5oz (measured out to 3 decimals), "stock" wheels, and the "nail" axles. Polish of the wheels and axles were allowed, but no cutting down of the tread. Those nights greatly equalized the scout cars, as we had some good setup adults involved with making sure all of the cars would make it down track. We had a 4 lane extruded aluminum track with electronic timing. After the hill, we had 32 feet of flat, so teh cars had to roll pretty good. Each car would run down each lane twice, and the times were compiled to determine the winner. The start order was randomized as well, so we never saw the same group of 4 run together a ton. You could tell who the fast cars were, but it was typically a shootout between 6-10 cars in the end. We also ran a cheating dad (open) class after the Scout race. That curbed the obvious adult built scout cars. The rules were 5oz max and it had to fit on the track. Not the best pic, but the blue one (daughter's car) was open class with the tread machined so only 1/16 or so made contact with the track (and 3 only wheels on the track), middle two were the boys' cars, and the flame job was me with straight thru axles, cut down wheels, and the "marshmallow" held all of the weight. Mine never made it down the track as someone knocked it off a table, but I had more fun cheering on all of the kiddos, anyway. My fastest car actually conformed to the rules. No pics, but it was a suspended design. Compared to all of the other cars, it was dead silent going down track.
The track we used was passed down from custodial leader to custodial leader. It was in 4 sections, IIRC. I had helped set it up a few times on derby day. We ran old cars down it to get the bugs out of it. No timing devices, just 2 finish line judges and some sand bags to slow the cars down.
great memories. i served as a den chief for a year, and one of the high points had to be the pinewood derby!
The Jalopy Journal
