Maverick inspired Pinewood derby

Every year for the Boy Scouts Pinewwod derby, my boy builds a car and I buy my own kit to build along with him. These are our Pinewood derby cars for this year. The Police Mav is my sons that was inspired by Wes' Police Mav. It's done except of the weights it is made out of the stock Boy Scout block of wood. The big one is mine inspired by my 2 door. It's not quite finished but you get the idea. Mine is larger than the stock block of wood that the kids get, but the wheel base is B.S. correct as is the tire track. We have to weigh them tomorrow so I need to see if mine is light enough to run if it had to.

 

Pretty cool!!! If you could get the lights to work and turn them on in the middle of the race, maybe the other entries will pull over and you can zip on by.

 

Cool Russ.
If your car is to heavy you can put the block of wood in the oven at a low temp to dry some more moisture out of the block.

 

I told my boy that if he looses, just tell them he was tring to pull them over for speeding.

 

He should go to the derby in a police uniform

 

they thats cool! i remember these days!!! (uh oh must be a sign of old age)

my cars were always hella slow but always it took best design!!!! lol!

 

Both are neat, Russ.

Good luck to Jr.

 

I LOVE the Pinewood derby

I ran the derby all 5 or so years that my son was in cubs. I have a 70 Boss stang thats very similar. Cars with that much wood rarely do well...I had NO metal on my stang and it still had to be gutted to get down to 5 ounces. smaller, 'denser' cars seem to do better...but the realistic ones always are crowd favorites. I'll try and find a pic.

AP out

 

Naaa, the sign of old age is when you cant remember those days.

 

i found it!

my 4 year old has loved car to death...literally...we've gone thru several sets of wheels.

 

thats pretty neat stuff.

 

Neat.

 

Some tips...

Run the thinnest wheels possible since rolling resistance has such as big effect when the weight is minimal.
Grease the axles with synthetic lube.
Anything we do to our real cars have many times the effect because of the mass involved. And rake that hood and windshield!

 

They keep the rules pretty tight. No moving the wheel base, powdered graphite only. stock wheels(may be smoothed to remove casting flash) We've polished the axles, trued the wheels(one good thing about running a lathe ) I also re cut the wheel slots on a milling machine to make sure they are dead parallel Going to add the graphite and spin the wheels to make them friction free. My maverick weighed in at 7.2 oz so I need to add some windows I guess. We race in a week.

 

I love it! Post some pics when the Mav Pinewood car is painted!