Pinewood Derby World Championship

Pacfanweb

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 6, 2006
Location
Wake Forest
Gotta take a second to get a proud Dad moment in:

My son won his Pack's PWD again this year. That's every year, Tiger through Webelos 2. So we build fast cars, nothing new...it's just kinda our thing. I hold build clinics for the Girl Scouts Powder Puff Derby every year as well. (same exact thing as Pinewood)

Well, little man won the District this year against all the other Pack winners, and usually that's as far as we can go here in NC....however, this year I found out about the World Championship of Pinewood Derby held in Times Square in New York. You had to finish 1,2 or 3 at District to qualify.

So since he's a Webelos 2 and it's his last year doing Pinewood, why not go? I figure there'll be some tough, tough, tough competition, but I've not been to NYC and neither have the kids. Wife's been once, years ago. A vacation it is, then. Hope to be competitive but realize there are a lot of serious folks about Pinewood Derby. I'm one of them, but I read the "pro" forums all the time to learn more and those dudes that race the adult leagues are just ridiculously fast. So I expect us to be racing a few of their kids and get summarily spanked.

Well.....not so fast, my friends. We apparently build pretty near the top level, because this happened:

That's right...Pacfanweb Jr. is the Webelos 2 Pro Stock World Champ. And he had to carry that big ass trophy around New York City the rest of the evening, lol.

Proud of my little dude, and myself as well.
Billy World Champ.jpg
Billy World Champ Trophy.jpg
 
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Congrats dude. That is Badass!

::beer::
 
That's awesome! So what are the tricks?
 
jeepinmatt said:
That's awesome! So what are the tricks?
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The basics are: thin wedge for aerodynamics. Make it light so you can pack tungsten in the rear...you want all the weight in the rear and low.

Rear axles canted at 3 degrees negative camber and perfectly aligned with each other.
Raise one front wheel so it doesn't touch if your rules allow.
Slightly bend the other one and give it some toe so it turns towards the center rail. 4" of turn in 4' is a good starting point.
Polish the axles, remove the burrs. Stock axles suck so buy a set of aftermarkets if you are allowed to.

Same with wheels...get a trued set if you can. Polish the inside of the wheel bores with Novus and a large fluffy pipe cleaner.

Burnish graphite into the bores with the stalk of a properly sized q-tip chucked in a drill....slowly. wal greens q tips usually are good sized. Too big will ruin the bore.

Rub some graphite on the body where the wheels will touch.

Clean the wheel treads. Do NOT put graphite on them. Some folks do and it slows them down. Can make the car wobble.
 
Pacfanweb said:
The basics are: thin wedge for aerodynamics. Make it light so you can pack tungsten in the rear...you want all the weight in the rear and low.

Rear axles canted at 3 degrees negative camber and perfectly aligned with each other.
Raise one front wheel so it doesn't touch if your rules allow.
Slightly bend the other one and give it some toe so it turns towards the center rail. 4" of turn in 4' is a good starting point.
Polish the axles, remove the burrs. Stock axles suck so buy a set of aftermarkets if you are allowed to.

Same with wheels...get a trued set if you can. Polish the inside of the wheel bores with Novus and a large fluffy pipe cleaner.

Burnish graphite into the bores with the stalk of a properly sized q-tip chucked in a drill....slowly. wal greens q tips usually are good sized. Too big will ruin the bore.

Rub some graphite on the body where the wheels will touch.

Clean the wheel treads. Do NOT put graphite on them. Some folks do and it slows them down. Can make the car wobble.
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HOLY CRAP!!!! My dad was an automotive engineer and the only thing he would do for our cars was chuck the wheels into a drill and sand off the moulding burrs. My whole pack knew that my dad worked at GM, so everyone assumed he would build my car for me. Best car I built was a wedge shape, not as low as your kid's, but kept weight low by nailing in two nails up front for "headlights". Opposite approach to yours as well. I painted it up and called it "Wedge-E".

Anyway, congrats!!!! That is a WAY COOL trophy! It's come a long way since I was a kid.
 
Congrats to your son! (And you).

Several of the things you mentioned said "if your rules allow". How does it work at the championship? What if different packs/districts have different rules? Is it still 5 oz. weight?

I went to the district race my Webelos II year, had to remove weight because of difference in scales, and ended up with a wheel coming loose on the car and killing it. At the district race you handed over your car and didn't get to touch it between rounds and didn't set it on the track yourself.
 
LBarr2002 said:
Congrats to your son! (And you).

Several of the things you mentioned said "if your rules allow". How does it work at the championship? What if different packs/districts have different rules? Is it still 5 oz. weight?

I went to the district race my Webelos II year, had to remove weight because of difference in scales, and ended up with a wheel coming loose on the car and killing it. At the district race you handed over your car and didn't get to touch it between rounds and didn't set it on the track yourself.
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At the championship race in New York, you checked your car in and you did not touch it after that. They staged it for you and did all the racing of it. I did not like the way they handled them. They were very rough with them and they damaged some cars.
Their rules were a little different from our local rules in that you could have a three wheel touching car and they specifically stated you could buy aftermarket axles and have your wheels trued but not lightened.
Locally, they make you have all four wheels touching and they claim you're supposed to use the parts out of the box but not everybody does, I'm sure of that.

When we build a 4-wheel touching car, we build it the same way with one axle steering it and make the other front wheel just barely touch so it is not bearing any weight but it will roll if they check it. And we do Lube up the tread on that wheel so that if it does touch it slides.
 
nice, congrats on a great job. I imagine competition is tight, there's only so fast these blocks can go.
My boys and I have built some decent cars, just good enough to bring home trophies, but never enough to "have" to go to district :D.
Interesting about not graphiting the wheels, we always try to do that. Now that I think back, we had a car with some serious wobbles, and it was the one where we made absolutely sure the tread surfaces were well covered and worked in.
We've always used straight axles, polished well, with stock wheels. Never thought about burninshing grafite in the wheel bores, but we do buff with pipe cleaner. We are supposed to use stock wheels and axles, so since a scout is trusthworthy and obedient, we use what we are given (this also helps a scout be thrifty too). Our rules state 4 wheels touching, so we make sure the 4th wheel isn't load bearing.
I keep pushing to get some aero going, but my boys like the big and bulky look. One year we made a semi truck-tractor, complete with a 2nd rear axle (not touching of course) and dual exhaust stacks.
My youngest has one more year left, then off to Boy Scouts.
 
Make sure the short end of the car where you have the least amount of space behind the axle is the back and the longest side is the front. That will give the wobbles also, if you build it backwards.

Burnishing graphite into the wheel board is probably the biggest gain of all of those steps. It makes a huge difference.
Clip both ends off a Q-tip. Chuck it up in your drill. Make sure the end isn't pointy where you clipped off the cotton part.
Might want to take a junk wheel and make sure it will fit into the bore...tightly but not so tight it tears it up inside.

Once you have the correct size, put some graphite in a paper towel. Hold the paper towel up to the Q-tip stem squeeze it and spin the drill. That will impregnate the stem with the graphite. Then take your wheel what you have previously published the bore on and then cleaned out and is nice and dry and slowly spin that drill and slide it through.....run it back and forth for about five to eight seconds it might even squeak a little bit. Do not spin it fast.
Will make a big difference and will also maintain the car's speed for more runs.
 
LBZ_Duramax said:
Congratulations, what was his fastest time down the track?
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42' Aluminum Best Track.
3.0005, if memory serves. Ran 3.0008 before that. Thought we were going to get a sub-3 the next run or two, but something happened and it slowed way up the next run...like 3.04 or something. Then sped back up to a 3.01, but never got faster than that. Track damaged the wheel a bit, and the kids tranporting the cars from the finish back to the start were handling them pretty rough. Several cars slowed down even worse than ours did.
In the overall speed run off at the end, which is the bragging rights race, it slowed up to about 3.03. It was kind of luck of the draw whether the track or the handlers or both damaged your car.
The finish area joint came apart for awhile and was flipping cars off of it as they slowed. People were getting pissed. We finally yelled at them to fix it and an adult came up there and secured it. Damage was already done for a lot of cars, though.

Hope they tighten that up next year. We won't be there (finished with Cubs) but it's growing every year.
 
I never knew there was Worlds for this. I finished third in the district not toooo many years ago! I guess I should have gone.
But that's awesome man, I hope y'all had a blast.
 
Van-go said:
I never knew there was Worlds for this. I finished third in the district not toooo many years ago! I guess I should have gone.
But that's awesome man, I hope y'all had a blast.
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Just started last year. This was the second one.

There is the Mid-America Pinewood Derby race. That's a lot bigger than the Worlds at this point, but there's really no qualifier to be in it...they have Scout, Kids, Adult divisions, and Pro division also. The pros are off-the-hook fast. They can build to the same rules you build to and will smoke you. Dudes are just insane in their level of detail.

Mid-America is cool because you can enter and just ship your cars there with staging instructions and they'll run them for you. You can watch on a live stream if you want.
 
Update: Son's old pack had their Derby this past Saturday. They invited him to come back and let the kids see his trophy and hand out trophies to all the winners.

What we didn't know was, they decided to name their "Overall Speed" award after my son. So starting this year, the fastest car of all the ranks gets the "Pacfanweb Jr Award" for fastest car. He got a nice plaque to commemorate it.

He's oblivious to all of it, of course, being only 12, but one day I think he might feel it's pretty cool that all the kids in that pack that win in the coming years will get an award named for him and his accomplishments.

Billy%20Bell%20Award_1.jpg
 
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Wow that's awesome.
Now my turn to brag a little bit, much smaller scale than above. My youngest son had his final pack pinewood derby in January. I laid back and let/told him to do all the work. I was a true assistant; I manned the mitre saw for major cuts, he used coping saw for detailing. I chucked up axles in the drill press, he did all filing and polishing. He didn't win best looking, didn't win most hands off. But out of about 40 cars, he got 3rd overall in the pack, heading to the district race in April.
 
RenegadeT said:
Wow that's awesome.
Now my turn to brag a little bit, much smaller scale than above. My youngest son had his final pack pinewood derby in January. I laid back and let/told him to do all the work. I was a true assistant; I manned the mitre saw for major cuts, he used coping saw for detailing. I chucked up axles in the drill press, he did all filing and polishing. He didn't win best looking, didn't win most hands off. But out of about 40 cars, he got 3rd overall in the pack, heading to the district race in April.
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Good job! Time for some tweaking before District now.
 
Ah I remember the pinewood derbys! I went to district every year and won 4 of them. One year I won speed and style at the pack level and chose to compete in speed. That car won at district as well. The "GOLDEN BULLET". Ill see if I can go find some pics. Looking back now as an Eagle scout those are some of my best memories!!! The wedge design works great as well as the bullet design.
 
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