Council race disappointment

[rickmc01]

Thanks, I am definitely going to give it a shot it looks like a lot of fun. I'm sure my wife will love it lol!

Our second year of racing my friend and I got together and built a two lane practice track out of Masonite with a smooth plastic glued on top of that. At first my plan was to build a car faster than the first years car but then I decided to build a digital timer which really helped motivate us to build faster cars and gave us a more precise way to gage our progress in building faster cars. We aren't anywhere close to being as fast as most of these guys on here but we did take first in our district race this year. After browsing around the posts on here I see we have more work to do but my grandson and I are looking forward to the challenge. The first year we raced we strung together a pair of hotwheels tracks to run our car down, we figured it was better than going to the pack race without a clue as to how it might do. To our surprice he won first place in his pack.

 

[Skywalker Racing]

The cars ran slower. It seemed liked putting more steer in them made them run worse. 42' besttrack to 42' bestrack. My son's car went from 218mph to 201mph. From everyone's advice here on the forum I added more steer to get rid of a wiggle. Originally for the pack race the steer was about 2" in 4'. Like I said I readjusted to 4 to 5. I don't know.

Like others have said, you can't compare times on two different tracks. Furthermore, those mph stats mean absolutely zero - they're strictly for amusement of the kids (though they are based in stats, they don't serve any real analytical purpose).

More steer will help solve a wiggle, but too much can create more drag. You need to find the sweet spot in the middle - and it's different for each build. There is no "one size fits all." 4" over 4' is simply a starting point. People tend to take that too literally.

Noticed from another poster that you changed a lot of stuff between races, so it's next to impossible to figure out what helped and what hurt.

Wheel and axle prep are critical and cannot be negotiated or skimped on. Did you follow John's prep process to the letter?

 

[Reggie]

Like others have said, you can't compare times on two different tracks. Furthermore, those mph stats mean absolutely zero - they're strictly for amusement of the kids (though they are based in stats, they don't serve any real analytical purpose).

More steer will help solve a wiggle, but too much can create more drag. You need to find the sweet spot in the middle - and it's different for each build. There is no "one size fits all." 4" over 4' is simply a starting point. People tend to take that too literally.

Noticed from another poster that you changed a lot of stuff between races, so it's next to impossible to figure out what helped and what hurt.

Wheel and axle prep are critical and cannot be negotiated or skimped on. Did you follow John's prep process to the letter?

I watched the video before and during polishing. The only thing is he sold me the four part kit and the video was a demonstration of the three part kit. I read on here that he simplified the kit to three parts. Maybe me using the fourth did something.

 

[Skywalker Racing]

I watched the video before and during polishing. The only thing is he sold me the four part kit and the video was a demonstration of the three part kit. I read on here that he simplified the kit to three parts. Maybe me using the fourth did something.

Hmm. I've only ever used the 4 part kit myself, but the video demonstrates the basic principles.

Really the only things I could see anyone slipping up on in the DD4H process is rushing it/not removing all of one step before moving on to the next, eating a bore up with a q-tip (don't use q-tips at all), not letting polish cure before moving on, or something along those lines. Make sure that bore is clean when you're done with it - NO pipecleaner fuzz or other contaminants.

Hard to say exactly what happened here, but one thing for sure is practice makes perfect. Keep building cars and honing your skills. Its fun anyway.

 

[jatofau1]

I watched the video before and during polishing. The only thing is he sold me the four part kit and the video was a demonstration of the three part kit. I read on here that he simplified the kit to three parts. Maybe me using the fourth did something.

Don't use the number 3 polish if you got the four part kit. All you need is #1, #2 and #4.

 

[TRE]

I would use the number 3 instead of the number 4

 

[Craven]

Go back and reread Derbydad4hire's website on the Polish it now says four steps and tells you how to apply the fourth.