LDS Freedom Forum

Muerta Rosa,

It depends upon how much you want to pay attention to "picky" details or to "push" the rules. There are actually books out there on how to make winning Derby cars. I'm sure you can look on the internet. In many wards, there are engineers who put a lot of engineering effort into making these cars faster. I haven't done any of these for a few years. I see that the boxes look different than before, I don't know if the cars are.

One of the critical issues is "friction". One thing you can do is make sure that the wheels are exactly square to the frame. There are jigs you can buy (or you can make one) to make sure that when you mount the wheels on the axles (nails), that they are perfectly square, and at exactly an even height.

You should also make sure that the inside hole on the wheels are square, and smooth. If you want to "bend" the rules a bit you can sand the inside of the inner wheel to make the width of the part contacting the axle (nail) as thin as you dare. This will also reduce friction.

Otherwise I would look on the internet to get a book of hints.

Regards,

George Clay

Muerta Rosa,

If you have already paid attention to all of what I mentioned, then you are a more learned, careful, builder of cars than most of the "Smarty Pants" who may think they know "special Secrets". If you pay attention to the fundamentals, and work carefully maybe you will build a winning car....

wait a minute... you already did!

Regards,

George Clay

cut all excess wood away, melt the lead into the wheel wells.

Don't you want as much weight as possible at the back end of the car?

Like jbalm said, you want the weight in the back. The only year my son entered the Derby I took the weights in the picture below and had them sticking out of the back end of the car like two exhaust pipes. When we weighed in we were a half oz light. His car took 2nd place, beating all the cars that were at full weight (which I don't remember what that is). He was only a couple thousands of a second slower than the winner.

5oz....that's right. It's been a few years since he was in it. All I could remember is we were 1/2 oz light. They asked us if we wanted to tape some coins or something to it. We just ran it as it was and it turned out okay.

We also used graphite on the axles. Other than that we didn't do much. Cut it like a "wedge" and went with it.

Muerte Rosa wrote:5oz
We use melted led underneath...then if it's over my husband just drills some out.


It appears this post isn't going to get me anywhere lol

And that there IS actually something i know more about than you guys ....unfortunately nothing important

It's important to your kid so that's all that matters.

When I was a kid, I made the ugliest derby car. LOL. I was embarrassed when I entered the local derby. Tons of scouts from all over town showed up. Then my car started winning. A lot! I didn't feel so bad after that. I think as long as you all have fun, that's all that matters. By the way, nice avatar! You look pleasant! That was quite a crazy expression you had in yesterday's avatar. :p

Why? What did OI say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RjJtO51ykY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

mgsbigdog wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RjJtO51ykY

whoa! B-)

led??? lead, whatever, I knew what you were talking about--- I made my boys make their own cars, then I worked with them to make them faster. The wedges always won.

Sand the nails smooth so there are no burrs to slow the wheels down.