Pinewood Derby

Last night was my son's last pinewood derby.  I am both saddened and relieved.  He is very proud of his cars, and his 3 year old brother is convinced it was his car too. (he even has the trophy to prove it!)  This year we went with a zombie theme and were able to take 2nd place for the pack (about 45 kids!)

My 3 year old got a participation trophy that was left over.  He really believes that he won the trophy because it was his car too.

My Webelos 2 with his 2nd place overall win and his ZOMBIE car!  

I have always managed to do OKAY with helping build a car, but I can definetely tell you when he was just a TIGER ready to race in his first derby my only thoughts were HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO THIS?  Now I find myself helping other kids. But I have a few observations and helpful hints to pass along before I am done with derbies.

1. It's about the kids.  Everybody says that, but it really is.  It is super easy to get caught up in making a car just PERFECT and not letting a kid help.  But let them help.  It is their race.  
2. DON'T let the kid do all the work.  Aside from using power tools at way to young of an age, the cars where the kids had to do it all by themselves never seem to do as good.  And all the kids tend to look dissapointed.  The method that I used was simple at first... I will buy all the stuff you need, you worry about how it looks and I will worry about how to make it fast for you.  I had him sand it (I touched it up when his 1st grade arms couldn't take it anymore) he painted it (I added coats when necessary while he was at school WITHOUT changing the paint colors or placement).  The next year I had him start to help me with the speed tricks.  But it was still a mostly you make it look cool and HELP me make it fast.  Same thing went for his 3rd race.  His 4th race was all up to him, he told me what he wanted to do and I bought the stuff and helped him (he even remembered the speed stuff), same thing for his 5th year.  
3. KNOW YOUR WEIGHT LIMITS AND RULES.  Even in my son's last year, weight was something I was pretty much in charge of.  He knows we need to add weights, and know's that it needed to be 5 oz.  I got that car weighed a bunch of times and got the weights for it and left it up to him how to place them.  A basic 2.3 oz set was recessed in the bottom of the car of course, but we still needed to add .3 oz and I gave him a selection of weights that added up to .3 oz  and let him choose how to incorporate it.  
4. Stickers are your friend.  As are scrapbooking supplies.  And Dremel Tools.  I am not a master painter.  My son isn't either.  We have used stickers in combination with paint, and have raided my scrapbooking supplies to MAKE stickers out of random images.  If your son has a theme in mind go for it.  My son never wanted to make a car that looked like anything other than a car (no hotdogs, skateboards, army tanks, wii remotes, guitars, etc) but plenty of other kids did.  Be sure to check the sticker section of your local scrapbook store for stickers that fit the theme.  
5. Know how your race will work.  Our race has each kid race in 6 heats, with one race in each lane.  Always against different cars.  There are complicated brackets and race formulas for this, but I never worried about this.  I knew that trophies were awarded to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd out of the pack (overall) then after those kids got their trophies, the fastest car in each DEN that didn't win a trophy got a Fastest in Den (all 5 ranks with Webelos 1 and 2 being seperated) then the committee members voted for a BEST IN SHOW of the cars that didn't win a trophy yet.  Then all the other's got a participation trophy.  After our first race, my son decided he had a better chance of winning a speed trophy than best in show.  So we focused on speed vs. looks.  It seems in our pack the cars that LOOK like something other than a car win Best In Show every year.  

So how do we make it fast.......

1. Bake the block of wood.  Put the wood in a 200 degree oven for 20-30 minutes.  Watch it to make sure it doesn't burn.  This helps to dry the wood out and make it as light as possible.  
2. Check that the axle grooves are at true 90 degree angles.  If not, fix them now when it's easier to fix (the wood is still a nice square).
3. Choose and Cut your basic shape.  We usually do a modified wedge shape that is thin in the front and thicker in the back in kind of an S curve shape.  Do NOT go too thin in the middle and back but definetely get alot of that wood out of there. 
4. I use a Dremmel tool to cut a recess in the bottom of the car to hold the weights.  Nothing fancy, I just set the depth collar thingy to the same depth as the weights.  Then I trace the weights onto the bottom of the car making sure they are set as far back as I can get them.   This often means that I have to break the weight bar and put some weights in the back behind the rear axle and the rest in the middle of the axles.  You always want the weight in the rear of the car.  I always cut a channel for the FULL bar of weights and we remove weights later to get the car to make weight.  The weights are removed from closest to the front axle so that the car is lightest in front.
5. Sand that car and sand some more.  Start with 60 or 80 grit sandpaper and move to 120, then 220 and keep getting finer.  The smoother you get your car the nicer the paint job will look.  Wipe the sawdust off the car with a tack cloth (or old sock in our case) to remove the extra dust that gets all over everything.  You can do a lot of shaping with a piece of sandpaper.  The most important thing to remember when doing this is that the cars will rest on 2 pegs at the top of the track, and you don't want to NOT have a place for the car to sit against the pegs at.  If your car comes to a sharp point, it will be harder for the track officials to get it on the starting peg, and you want it to be sitting right when they release the pegs to let it zoom down the track.
6. Rub some rubbing alcohol on the car and let it dry.  This helps to raise the grain on the wood.  Then you can sand it off with very fine sandpaper.
7. PRIMER IS YOUR FRIEND.  When we first started, I didn't think to primer the car.  It really helps the paint look good.
8. Paint it.  We have used acrylic paints, TESTOR's model car paints, and spray paint.  Of theses, the paints you have to apply with a brush were very difficult to keep the brush marks out of paintjob and the paint looked bumpy-ish.  The TESTOR's paints gave the car a very authentic car paint color.  They looked like real cars paint jobs, but they were slow to dry.  The spray paint has been our best results.
9. Add your decorations.  Stickers, little guys, the body details or metal pipes or whatever.  Actually if you are adding the plastic fenders or whatever add those before you primer and paint.  Glue those down and sand the glue to look smooth.

NOW COMES WHAT I THINK IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF A FAST CAR AND THE PART THAT I HANDLED FOR MY SON FOR THE EARLY DERBIES HE WAS IN.

• I gathered my axles and put just the pointy tip into a dremmel tool and turned it on.  I was looking for axles that didn't vibrate or wobble too much. I choose the straighest 4 axles that I had. 
• Once I had the straightest 4, I remounted them in the dremmel tool with just the tip in the dremmel. I cut 1//2 inch strips of 220 grit sandpaper and soaked them in water for 5 minutes.  Then I took a strip and sanded the shaft of the nail until it was smooth,  I also made sure to sand the under side of the nail head.  I got some pumice powder and made a paste and used that to further polish the axles.  REVEL sells a kit with these things and instructions in it.  USE IT!
• After I did the axles, I moved on to the tires.  I bought a wheel truing mandral from REVEL and mounted it on the dremmel with the tire on it.  I spun the tires looking for the MOST ROUND least WOBBLEY tires.  I selected the best 4 and then sanded them.  Just the surface that touches the track and only until they weren't shiny anymore.  You want to smooth the surface and make racing SLICKS.  But you DON'T want to  alter the tire, just true it up.   Start with a coarse sand paper and work up to a finer grain and don't press hard, the sandpaper just needs to touch the spinning tire. 
• GRAPHITE PACKING.  Most packs don't allow the use of liquid lubricants and dry graphite is all you have to work with.  Graphite is awesome if you use it correctly.  Rub it into the car where the wheel will or could overlap the car.  Rub it into the tire surface.  There is an instructional video I found that shows how to PACK the wheel with it HERE.    I didn't use the tool but the concept is pretty good.  You mix graphite with rubbing alcohol and pack it into the wheel where the axle goes thru.  Blow dry it to evaporate the rubbing alcohol, and BAM! You have a wheel and axle full of graphite powder.
• I have also seen people use a dot over the axle head stuck to the tire that was filled with graphite so that the graphite can 'feed' into the tire as it spins down the track.  I am too clumbsy and would probably stick the tire and axle together to do something like that.
• Mount the wheels to the car and be sure to keep a slight gap between the tire and the body of the car to reduce friction.  Nothing really big so that the tire will wobble, but 1/16 of an inch or so.  
• Make sure the car rolls straight.  Adjust the axles as necessary.
• Puff dry graphite into the gap between the car and the tire.  Puff it into the wheel where the axle goes. Puff it under the head of the nail against the tire.  

Our first car, a spiderman theme, complete with a spiderman driver.

He won fastest in his den this his tiger year.

Our first car was a preshaped body kit car, because I was overwhelmed and had no idea how to cut or shape a car.  It was made at our kitchen table and we used a knife and sandpaper to round it out.  I hacked the wood out with a butcher knife on the bottom for the weights.  It was probably the most fun of all our cars to build, and I will never forget it.

He won the Fastest in his den that year.  And it was a HUGE den.  Something like 12 or 15 boys.  Large enough that the following year we split the den into 2 separate dens for
managability.

For his wolf year, he won 3rd fastest in the pack!

The BATMOBILE!

This year we won 3rd In the whole Pack.  He was so impressed.  This year was the first year we messed with the axles and wheels.  And the first year we used a dremmel tool.  And the first year we went to our DERBY WORKSHOP.  Our pack holds a workshop with ban saws and sandpaper and paint, so that every boy can show up with the block of wood and leave with a car that is ready to slap wheels on.  It was awesome for us since we didn't have a saw to cut our basic shape.
Our Batmobile car was made from the pinewood derby block of wood with the batmobile add ons sold at Michaels. The add on kit had a pattern for us to cut the block of wood, and plastic fenders, and a batman rubon decal.

The red car in the middle is his car for his Bear year.  He drew the skull himself and used a sharpie to draw it on the Testor's paint job.  The paint color was beautiful, but we learned a hard lesson this year about Testor's needing a LONG time to fully dry and the paint could easily be 'dinged' by touching.  Also, the weight's on the outside of the car were a necessity to get it to 5 oz.  The whole car was really thin, and we didn't have room for a bunch of weights on the underneath. Which I think effected our placement, as we didn't get a big trophy this year.

Another shot of our car on the upper right with the pink sticker

We were fastest in the den this year.

For some reason I don't have a picture of the car by itself that I can find from his Webelo 1 race.  But his is the Blue thunderbird car on the bottom right hand corner.  It was a super fast car.

Our car was the blue one on the lower right with the pink sticker on it.

Another shot of the car, this time from a side angle.  His car was cut from wood ourselves, then we added a spoiler and fenders from a plastic add on kit.  We painted the windows ourselves too.  Very angular this year.  This was a TESTOR's paint paint job.





He got fastest in his Rank this year.  For some reason they had the Webelos 1 and 2's race as one group this year.  He came so very close to a bigger trophy.  They had to do 2 raceoff's to determine the final placements.  A car had jumped the track and hitched a ride with his car down most of the track this year resulting in his only low placement.  Otherwise he had 4 1st place heats, 1 2nd place heat and 1 4th place heat that he had a hitchhiker for.

And of course our Webelos 2 car was the best placement yet!

This year he wanted a zombie themed car.  So we downloaded a picture from DEVIANTART and warped it down to 7 inches by 2 inches.  I had it printed at walgreens and peeled the paper backing off the photograph.  I used some scrapbooking glue to adhere it to the car.  We put the least amount of effort into decorating this car, but I guess after all these years of practice, we knew what we were doing.  He finished 1st in all 6 heats and had to do a raceoff for 1st in the Pack!  He unfortunately lost that raceoff by a 2 tenth's of a second and finished in 2nd place overall!