Pinewood Derby Car Tips NEEDED!!

[paysensmom]

My children are participating in the Awana group at our church. They are having a pinewood derby type race. We got two blocks of wood with the wheels and things in the kits.

How on earth do you design these? I know we need to sand the wood into the shape we want, paint it and that is about all I know. What else do I need to know and how do I help my children make theres look nice and win the race?

Thank you so much!!

 

[palmtreegirl]

If you google, you will find lots of websites that can help you for example-

http://www.fastpinewoodderbytips.com/

If you go to Michaels craft store they have a section for Pinewood derby cars too. The most important thing is to put graphite on the wheels and you can buy a kit that comes with it there.

We do both Awana and Pinewood derby. The first year we did Awana Derby it wasn't fun because we didn't know any of the tips and the kids cars didn't even make it down the track.

Good luck!!

 

[chrissyd1]

Check with your local Lowes.

They are having Dremel clinics about making the cars.

 

[Art 1]

Lots of graphite on the wheels. The car needs to run true and straight. It is critical to get the wheels aligned correctly. Also sand off any seams that may be on the plastic wheels. We had one year that our car won all it's races, other years not so good.

 

[MichelleinMaine]

This isn't the "how do I win" answer you want, but my two cents on derbies (done ten years of them between my two kids.)

How to make it look nice- what you think looks nice and what your child thinks is his/her dream car is likely to be very different. Guide them to making a car they can be proud of.

We start out with a blank piece of paper. I fold it in eighths (half, and then quarters the other way). Let them quickly brainstorm ideas for what they think would be cool. Sky's the limit, these are just ideas. (One time, DS wanted to make one looke like the Eiffel Tower, lol.)

Then sit with them and talk about what ones would be practical to do (because of cuts or easier paint jobs, whatever.) Make sure you stick to your rules about extending the block in any direction. (Not sure what rules Awana follows, but I know scouts has these, mostly so it will fit on the track.)

Adult cut/sands the car. (The simplest shape is a basic wedge-slant cut the nose and and glue it on the rear end. Looks like a triangle of cheese. {and often time is painted in derbies to look like cheese, lol. Not necessary- any paint job will do!})

Use a spray paint for the main color of the car. (Yes, I let my kids spray paint. Practice on cardboard first to get the hang of it- steady pressure and constant motion. Nice even strokes that start ~before~ you get to the wood. Many light coats (with drying in between) better than a heavy gloppy coat.)

Let them decorate it however their little heart desires (here's where you just step back and let them use their "vision" ) Acrylic paint markers make this, well, child's play. You can get a pack of 4 or 5 of them for about $10 at Walmart {craft dept} or any craft store. It's really as easy as just drawing with a marker at that point. They can also use stickers, or cut pictures out of magazines to glue on. Glitter and Elmers glue popular at girl scout derbies

There are a ton of links out there on how to sand axles and wheels. Do look at them to get an idea how to get them on straight so it will roll well. Make sure it is the maxium weight (5oz if you are following Cub rules.) You can buy weights at the scout shop or Michaels, can also just put screws in the back or glue on coins, whatever. The post office will let you use their scale. Be aware the"official" scale me be different and you may have to tweak day of the race.

But don't kill yourself trying to do every last "winning tip". Unless it's a small pool, odds are your child WON'T win. Stress that the fun of the derby is to do their best (to steal the cub scout line).

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

Please, please follow all the rules!

I can't stress that enough. One year in our pack, 5 boys had cars disqualified because of illegal changes their Dad's made based on stuff they read on a website.
They were sooooo disappointed.

DS would design his car, we would draw the design on the car and my husband would use a small handsaw to get most of the wood off that needed to be removed for the design. Then he would supervise DS while he sanded and painted the car.

They would get the tires on the car after a good graphiting and spend lots of time dealing with alignment. Then they would weigh the car and dig out areas on the bottom to put pennies for weights. You can buy weights but we always figured why bother when pennies glued in worked fine. They were always careful not to do this near the tires and not to go over the weight limit.

Then they'd spend more time messing with the alignment. LOL

The boys in the Pack always had a great time designing their cars. Some of my favorites include the Wienermobile and a Spongebob shaped boat.
My son won his class once (we raced by class - IE: Tiger, Wolf ect) and got to go to district. He didn't win there but had fun watching all the cars race.

 

[mom2taylorandemily]

Google Pinewood Derby cars for designs. Put the weight in the front. And stick within the weight limit. I agree with Graphite on the axels for the wheels and take some sand paper to the finish on the tire surface. Make sure it rolls in a straight line. Our AWANA Gran Prix was very competitive, for the kids and leaders heats. Just remember to make sure the kids have fun.

 

[RNMOM]

We spent several years doing Pinewood. The best was the year my youngest was a Tiger cub. He didn't want to do much with his car so it was basically a block of wood with well balanced wheels. We did use the pinewood weights. I got them at Michaels. He drew some shark images on it. Well, he beat everyone in the whole pack. We had about 70 kids. The older kids who had very fancy cars were not very happy about that. There's a commercial on TV with a dad and son and a pinewood car.

Let your son do any design he wants. We had some kids who glued lego stuff to theirs and some who sculpted and painted fancy designs. Let him make it how he wants. He will need the most help with the wheels as the others above said.

 

[PollyannaMom]

I second letting your kids do as much of the work as is safe for them (i.e. - if too young to cut, still make them sand it themselves). And definitely let them choose the paint colors, etc.

DH read that the weight should be in the back, not the front, and DS has done very well with that in Cub Scouts. Get as close to the limit as you can without going over.

The best tips I have are to sand any "spurs" off the wheels (the little imperfections on the plastic from where the mold comes together) and to make sure it rolls very straight.

Advanced tip - if you are drilling holes for weights, (and it's possible with your design) drill before you cut the car out. It's easier to clamp the plain block steady than a rounded shape.

Good luck.

 

[cybrkitn]

I second checking out Lowes. They have workshops on Saturdays this month and I think one date in March. Check out their web site for the dates and times for your local store.

Also, Awana may have different rules compared to the Boy Scouts. Make sure to check that out as well.

If you need certain items for the car, like weights, extra wheels, decals, etc., you can go to Lowes, Michaels or AC Moore (just to name a few) for them.

DS8's Cub Scout pack just had their own workshop this past Saturday. They provided the tools and the kids (with adult help/supervision) cut out their designs and sanded them down. Now it's up to DS to finish the rest of his car. His car needs to be weighed in on Valentine's Day. Their race is on the 18th.

Some of the Dads are a bit disappointed this year. No Dad's race b/c the pack just got much bigger than last year. So there isn't enough time for the Dads to have their own cars to race.

 

[MnMomtoboys]

We have been doing these races for the past 11 years. If you want a winner do a wedge cut. Wheels must be straight and have lots of grafite on them. Get the pinewood derby weights and put them on top and at the front of the car. If its set up so you can go the night before bring all your tools with you.

We have done it this way and have won 8 or 9 times. keep in mind if you win this you will move on to district.

 

[jodifla]

We just participated in one for the first time. My DS's car was the overall 1st place winner....it beat EVERY other car there, more than 40 of them, and it wasn't even close.

Our car didn't look like much compared with all the very fancy cars. It was downright homely in fact. Sort of a block of wood with a snout. But it was heavy ...almost exactly to the allowed weight. (We used fishing weights inserted into the back.) We used graphite like previous PPs. We made sure the wheels rolled well and that the car went straight.

And we have DS's 1st place trophy on the fireplace mantel! We're off to district next month.

 

[Frantasmic]

Thin and heavy seems to win a lot of these races. Make it aerodynamic and perhaps hide/sink weights into the wood.

With AWANA, go for the best painted trophy though. It's easier.

I had two kids go through AWANA and we won more design trophies than we did speed trophies.

Cub Scouts is definitely all about the speed. Needless to say, we haven't done well there.

Dremel and a good kit of Dremel tools does make it easier.

 

[tink_lover]

We just participated in one for the first time. My DS's car was the overall 1st place winner....it beat EVERY other car there, more than 40 of them, and it wasn't even close.

Our car didn't look like much compared with all the very fancy cars. It was downright homely in fact. Sort of a block of wood with a snout. But it was heavy ...almost exactly to the allowed weight. (We used fishing weights inserted into the back.) We used graphite like previous PPs. We made sure the wheels rolled well and that the car went straight.

And we have DS's 1st place trophy on the fireplace mantel! We're off to district next month.

We just participated in our first one and learned a lot of lessons about it. The majority of the cars that won had the weight in the back, not the front or top. The winning car had tungsten weights in the back. Apparently, that dad's car wins every time.

 

[golfgal]

We just participated in our first one and learned a lot of lessons about it. The majority of the cars that won had the weight in the back, not the front or top. The winning car had tungsten weights in the back. Apparently, that dad's car wins every time.

Isn't that the truth--the DAD'S CAR

We did Pinewood one year. At one point one of the leaders was holding up a car asking who's car it was. The DAD had to nudge his kid and told him "that's your car". The Dad's got more excited then the kids when their cars won. They finally just started an open division for the Dads .

 

[SAHDad]

Isn't that the truth--the DAD'S CAR

We did Pinewood one year. At one point one of the leaders was holding up a car asking who's car it was. The DAD had to nudge his kid and told him "that's your car". The Dad's got more excited then the kids when their cars won. They finally just started an open division for the Dads .

Yeah, I know how that goes. Our pack is large enough that we don't have time for a Dad's division (though I wouldn't have minded one). DS (who is a Tiger Cub) designed his car. I cut it out, and did the drilling to add the weights (lead sinkers, plus some commercial weights as decoration). He did all the sanding (including using a Dremel under my supervision), and the painting.

The older Scouts had much more polished looking cars, but I kind of expected that. DS is still in the "the more colors it has, the better" stage of painting, and the other Tigers were more or less in the same boat.

(As for how he did - 3rd in den, 7th overall, which isn't bad, considering that one of the axles was misaligned, and probably slowed him down by a tenth of a second or so - which is a huge difference. He had a lot of fun though, and learned some things, which is the important thing.)

The fastest cars were generally a variation on the wedge or flat plane design, and weighted heavily to the rear, and as close to the maximum weight as possible. There were a couple that were not aerodynamic, but still did pretty well (again, not more than a tenth of a second or so from the top place), and they did pretty well in the design category.

 

[KiminChicago]

Our pack used to have three major awards -- Fastest, Coolest and Funniest. Every year my DS tried to have the fastest car, but some of these dads are absolutely cutthroat about Pinewood Derby (there was even a rumor that some of the cars were actually purchased off of ebay).

Finally, in his last year as a Webelos Scout, he decided that he was going to try for the funniest car. His entry was a guy in a bathtub. He drew it out, his dad helped him with the initial cuts and he sanded it. I helped him sculpt the guy out of clay (just a head, shoulders and arms) and a shark fin. DS used pearl beads as soap bubbles which also worked really well to tweak the final weight. The funny thing was that it was also pretty fast (took second place in our den).

That year another boy in our den got the coolest car trophy (he just cut the block down and glued an electronic name badge to the top -- it looked really neat flashing all sorts of cool Scout slogans as it ran down the track). A third boy from our den got the fastest car trophy, finally beating out all the dads who had been in it for years. That was a big year for our den -- we got the trifecta!

In our son's Boy Scout troop, they run what they call the "Cheaters' Derby." The only rules are: no one's car is allowed to damage another person's car and anything dangerous is forbidden. We had to add those two rules after someone used a remote control airplane propeller that was too wide for the track and was chopping into the other cars, and one other Scout tried to use a rocket engine. It's really funny to see what they come up with every year.

ETA: I guess my point is that I wish Pinewood Derby was more about having fun making the car, rather than the emphasis on winning the speed competition. Because we had three different trophies, we always had some really great entries in the other categories too, even if some of them were as slow as molasses in January.

 

[brerrabbit]

Everyone has an opinion so here's mine.

When my son was young we lived in the Clear Lake area of Houston. Anyone familiar with the area knows it is the home of NASA. That meant he would compete against all the kids of the NASA engineers and what ever they came up with. My phylosophy was simple. I asked my son, then in first grade what he wanted on the car. It was a block of wood with two dowls for axels that you glued in grooves on the bottom and four screws that held plastic wheels on the axels. The screws had threads and then a smooth part near the head that the wheels turned on. All he wanted was a little shaved off the front so you knew which end went first. He painted it blue with water colors, and painted a number 1 on the side. Other than that there were no alterations except these. I had no idea what it weighed so I drilled a hole towards the front that was big enough for penneys to go in. I asked my friend who was accomplished in pinebox racing what else I should do. He said put the screw head in a drill and on low speed turn the screw and polish the smooth part of the screw with steel wool. Secondly deburr the wheels. they are plastic and if you look the surface that touches the ground are v shapped. The plastic mold leaves some material when they remove from the mold. Take a razor and shave them off maintaining the V shape. Basically you want as little surface as possible touching the ground. I used three in one oil, not graphite.

When we went to the race we were well under weight and I stuffed all the penneys I could in the hole, it was still under weight. I stacked more on and used scotch tape to hold them in place. It raced still under weight. He won six rounds and blew away the NASA engineers in the finals. He even won the overall compitition for grades K through 6. Afterwards I couldn't get out the door because everyone of those NASA engineers wanted to know what I did to the car.

 

[NotUrsula]

It was a block of wood with two dowels for axles that you glued in grooves on the bottom and four screws that held plastic wheels on the axels. The screws had threads and then a smooth part near the head that the wheels turned on.

I can't speak for Awana, but for BSA there is a regulation kit (which your council may or may not require, but ours does), and right now the BSA kit does not use axles. The wheels mount to the chassis via roundhead nails pressed into a precut slot, which means that it is a royal PITA to get them perfectly aligned. Some people I know drill out the holes in the wheels a little bit to make them turn more freely, but you have to be careful not to overdo -- you don't want wobble. The official guidelines also have very strict rules about wheel camber -- they use calipers to check it and if it's off, you'll be disqualified.

 

[SAHDad]

I can't speak for Awana, but for BSA there is a regulation kit (which your council may or may not require, but ours does), and right now the BSA kit does not use axles. The wheels mount to the chassis via roundhead nails pressed into a precut slot, which means that it is a royal PITA to get them perfectly aligned. Some people I know drill out the holes in the wheels a little bit to make them turn more freely, but you have to be careful not to overdo -- you don't want wobble. The official guidelines also have very strict rules about wheel camber -- they use calipers to check it and if it's off, you'll be disqualified.

BSA also disallows the use of liquid lubricants.

I think it has been stated before, OP - but read the rules carefully and ask about whether or not something is allowed before making the changes to the car, wheels, axle/nail, etc. I don't think we DQ'ed any cars this year, but I was herding my Tigers, and that pretty much took all my attention.