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Star Wars Pinewood Derby!


Quartermaster
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Just wanted to share my first attempt at building a pinewood derby car for my son, Star Wars style.

We were going to try and do a Sandtrooper car first of course, but the boy changed his mind when it came time to start and this is what we came up with.

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Woodchuck here. What size is the engine? V8? Does it have a button you push and The Force propels it?

Put a SMALL drop of 3-In-1 oil on each axle and wax the tires, and that baby will fly. LOL

Unfortunately, there are strict rules for this race.

Max. weight - 5 oz. (As it sits it's exactly 4 oz. Need to add some weight over the rear axle. Weight back = SPEED)

Max Length - 7 in.

Max Width - 2 3/4 in.

Ground Clearance - No less than 3/8 in.

No wet lubricants, polishing of the axles and graphite are permitted .

No sanding, polishing or drilling out the wheels.

Engine - Gravity Only

(If the boy can use the Force, so be it, but that would mean he could be a Jedi and he should have no business suiting up in Sandtrooper Armor! :P )

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  • 3 weeks later...

Pinewood Derby Update!!!!

Well, the big Race Day was this Saturday the 26th, and The Captain Rex Racer did not disappoint!

AJ's car ran a number of heats all morning and just kept piling up the wins!!!!

He and Capt. Rex ended up with 1st Place in his Den and then went up against the two top finishers from the other Dens in the Pack. After two head to head races with the other top cars, Capt. Rex fell just short of the top two spots and we ended up with a 3rd Place Trophy overall in the Pack. It was a great day and a great outing for Team ECG. This was our 1st try at the Pinewood Derby and I think it went pretty well. 3rd place out of 35 racers is pretty good for our 1st go.

Here are some pics of the races Capt. Rex and AJ won.

First the track....

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The last two pics are the final two races where we lost.

The 1st pic is the car that took 2nd place overall. We were neck and neck right down to the finish line. If you look close, you will see the other car is piloted by a Lego Clone.

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This last pic is of the 1st place finisher. He didn't beat us by much. Sad thing is, we lost to a Mountain Dew Bottle on wheels!!!!!

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Here is the proud boy with his Trophy...

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Here's my last Pinewood Derby car.

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"She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts kid."

I work at the Hyundai Proving Grounds and we had a family day a few months back.

One of the Fun things they had was the Pinewood Derby.

We had several classes, and mine was the stock adult class.(couldn't have adults racing kids, now could we?)

I was up against Engineers and designers for Hyundai/Kia. I'm just a Mechanic (what would I know?)

I came in 1st place.

Here's what I did;

The discolored spots are graphite that rubbed off and got all over everything.

The body was cut and sanded in a wedge shape to reduce drag

The car is balanced with the majority of the weight towards the rear

The paint has been polished to a high gloss

The axles are polished

The hubs are coned and polished

The wheels are balanced and trued

The car is exactly the max weight to the gram.

The car runs on 3 wheels, since the 4th wheel will cause more friction and slow the car.

The paint is removed from the body behind the hubs so there is no drag

Everything is lubed with Graphite.

If the surface it is sitting on is not perfectly level, it will start rolling on its own LOL

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That's an amazing looking pinewood racer! Imitation is the most sincerest form of flattery, so we will certainly be flattering you next year :)

Last year we made the General Lee

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This year we represented our Kung Fu studio

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We also talked about holding an adults unlimited racing event, where the only restriction is the 5 ounce weight limit. We might even turn it into a fund raiser :duim:

Charlie

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