Posted: 2/29/2012 6:00:36 AM EDT
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My boy just brought home his Pinewood derby kit. Should be a fun project for us. Any tips from anyone that has done this? |
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Keep the weight as close to the limit as possible, graphite the piss out of the axles.
At the speeds you'll be going, aerodynamics don't seem to matter, but do SOMETHING to make it look cool. To be honest, your kid won't remember the coefficient of drag, or that bullshit, but "The time Dad and I made that cool car together" will be with him forever. Hell, mine even had a plastic Roots blower from a car model we trashed just for the parts. Sucked, lost every race, but damn, it looked GOOD... The next year I did better, can't remember what it looked like, though. 
GREAT Father/Son project. 
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There are a million speed tips on the web. My tip is to help him do it not do it for him. Surf the web together looking for some body shapes that are within your ability to do.
You do the jobs that can remove fingers and let him do as much of the rest of it as possible. You can still be a nerd about looking for speed but teach him how to do the jobs. I taught my son the basics of running an end mill while we were calculating axle hole spacing (we drilled our own holes for more precise axle placement). |
Just did a search on pine wood derby here you go
official 2012 pine wood |
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I found the REAL trick is to make the car come in 2nd place.
After my son won his first it was off to regionals with 100's of screaming kids lasting 12 hours - on consecutive days. The key is to come in 2nd. Fast enough to beat the majority. Do it WITH him. Not FOR him. Best part was painting and finishing. |
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1) don't sweat over it. 2) Let your son design and build it 3) Depending on his age, you can do the tech research to make his car as fast as it can be. I don't follow those rules very well. Next year I will do better. "We" won local 2 years in a row now. Spent 30 minutes Sunday in the shop, and another 30 smelting. Car was a 1/4" plank with wheels on the edges, a disk of lead to max weight - place about 1" in front of the rear wheels. It won because the longer wheel base kept it from having track issues (which knocked out all but 1 other car in the pack). ––- it ran unpainted. He should have started it over Christmas. Starting it 26hrs before the race was offensive to me. –––– I may pull the axles off and let him actually make it into a car before district. Each year the car is less complex than the year before it seems. 2 years ago the car was just cool. Last year the car was wicked fast. This year - meh. Maybe will finish it before district. |
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Nice |
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Pro-tip: Do NOT bet on the Pinewood Derby with other parents, even if you plan to donate the proceeds to the den/troop. Ask me how I know.
For the rest tho, it's a great time working on it with your kid. Let him do the bulk of the work (don't be the dad who creates the car for Jr.....he needs the satisfaction). Enjoy! |
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3 wheels contact the track. The 4th is there just for looks.
Turn the wheels so they are beveled and produces the smallest contact area. Aerodynamics do matter some. A triangular wedge seems to be the simplest and most effective. High quality auto paint and polish. Flying planks are also a common design as are fish/torpedo shaped bodies. Polish the axles till they shine and lots of graphite. Weight distribution matters. Becareful because lots of the tricks will get you disqualified. My dad and cousin built my car.  But it took first place in my pack.
He never had a chance to do stuff like this as a kid and I think it consumed him. LOL he became better at letting me do stuff as I got older. |
| Man I wish I still had my pinewood derby car. I hadn't even thought about it for years until this thread. Regardless of how it looks the posters here saying to let HIM do it and not you are correct. I barely did any of the work for mine and I still regret that. Rule #1 is have fun with it and make it fun for him. Oh, and GOOD LUCK! |
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all sorts of "cheats" out there
funniest I found was they take wheels and flare out the lip so the wheels ride on just a tiny lip instead of the entire width of the "tire" less drag lol never got to do pinewood derby and I dont have a kid but I still want to build one for some reason |
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Thanks! |
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Let your son do as much of the work possible. Any cutting you do with power tools, of course, you do, or very highly supervised.
Let him paint it, no matter how bad the brush strokes. You can find tips on using graphite, etc. The important thing, you do NOT want to get there on race day and not be able to race because your car is over the maximum weight, length, width, wheel track not correct, etc. Make sure it meets all specs. I made a clear Plexiglas "gauge" for fast processing when I checked in the boys when my son was in Scouts. It was a clear box with the center guide rail of plexi, too, glued in. If the car fit in the box and the wheels touched the bottom, it was legal dimensions. Then a quick check on the scale, 5 oz or less was legal. Done! Next car! Encourage him to customize it... decals, model car parts, etc, glued on. A good cement for that stuff is E6000 or Aleene's 7800, Arts & Craft store stuff. These glues glue dissimilar materials well, and are slightly flexible, parts don't break off like with epoxy or other glues. Have fun. |
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Quoted: My boy just brought home his Pinewood derby kit. Should be a fun project for us. Any tips from anyone that has done this? Don't get all caught up in it. Let your son do whatever he wants and make him do the majority of the work. The first year we did it, I didn't do the above. I sort of took over. Wasn't nearly so fun for my son and "our" car didn't do so well. Second year, he picked the design, we cut it out, he sanded it, I spray painted it gold (his color choice), he painted some flames and lightning on it (wasn't as nice as I could have done, but it was his and he loved it) I just picked up some weights from the hobby store that screwed into the bottom, he hammered in the axle nails in and we shot some graphite on the wheels. His car placed first in his pack and overall at our Church and he placed second in the entire city. And it was all his work. You just make sure he keeps all of his fingers and toes and let him have fun. Don't get all competitive and don't spend a lot of money on tuning the car up. |
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Quoted:
Paint it like the Deathmobile and build an Eat Me cake transportation box. http://www.digitalbusstop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/animal-house.jpg THis, and have your kid install a size B model rocket motor for the lulz (maybe after the official race). |
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Quoted:
You should haul out your Type-A competitive personality and turn this into an epic beat-down of all the other dads, because they are cheating SOB's trying to make you son look like a big loser. To keep that from happening, our pack had a Dad's car competition also. There were no rules for the dad's car. I made a car with a micro switch on the front to keep the electric motor off when up against the gate. When the gate dropped, the motor turned on by a 9 volt batter. The motor wound up thread on a pulley and pulled the thread off the rear axel and it turned the wheels. The pulley was shaped so that the more thread was wound up, the faster the thread was pulled off the axel, so it gained speed with time.It was only powered briefly because the thread was open ended but the car hit the finish line before most of the other dad's cars had cleared the gate. |
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http://www.abc-pinewood-derby.com/speed-secrets-book.php
That book will tell you what you need to know. Make sure you do it because you want to spend time with your son and have him accomplish something. WAYYYY too many parents are about winning, and nothing else. The GF's nephew did the Derby a few years back, and there was that dad that only cared about winning..the son looked miserable. Of course, the dad built the car and it did win most all the races and took 1st overall, but, we could tell that the spirit of the event was lost. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
You should haul out your Type-A competitive personality and turn this into an epic beat-down of all the other dads, because they are cheating SOB's trying to make you son look like a big loser. To keep that from happening, our pack had a Dad's car competition also. There were no rules for the dad's car. I made a car with a micro switch on the front to keep the electric motor off when up against the gate. When the gate dropped, the motor turned on by a 9 volt batter. The motor wound up thread on a pulley and pulled the thread off the rear axel and it turned the wheels. The pulley was shaped so that the more thread was wound up, the faster the thread was pulled off the axel, so it gained speed with time.It was only powered briefly because the thread was open ended but the car hit the finish line before most of the other dad's cars had cleared the gate. That's ate up. |
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My son got 2nd place in his pack this year with this flying wedge design. The bolts underneath to add/remove weight at the event easily is pure genius.
He had the fastest time on the track & likely would have won overall, but there were two races where he had some poly-fill that they were using as the crash cushion get wrapped around an axle & he had 2 slower runs. There was another car that was running identical times to my son but he didn't have any bad runs... And they added up the times of all the runs to see who won. So a bad run or two had a big effect on the score when it came to the final results. http://boysdad.com/archives/2146 |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
You should haul out your Type-A competitive personality and turn this into an epic beat-down of all the other dads, because they are cheating SOB's trying to make you son look like a big loser. To keep that from happening, our pack had a Dad's car competition also. There were no rules for the dad's car. I made a car with a micro switch on the front to keep the electric motor off when up against the gate. When the gate dropped, the motor turned on by a 9 volt batter. The motor wound up thread on a pulley and pulled the thread off the rear axel and it turned the wheels. The pulley was shaped so that the more thread was wound up, the faster the thread was pulled off the axel, so it gained speed with time.It was only powered briefly because the thread was open ended but the car hit the finish line before most of the other dad's cars had cleared the gate. Ok, that is hilarious! 
OP, do not pass up the opportunity to teach tool whoring, get this wind tunnel |
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Quoted:
My boy just brought home his Pinewood derby kit. Should be a fun project for us. Any tips from anyone that has done this? not sure if this is still legal or not (its been 30+ years since my pinewood derby days) but we used to sand the little "tread" pattern off of the wheels to make em smooth and completely round. Alitle powdered graphite on the wheel axles. if u have to add weight try to keep it as centered/balanced as possible. J- |