Hey Derby Dad, I purchased a tube of pinewood pro graphite with moly before I found this site or yours. Are you familiar with it? We used it on our Wolf car this year and was .15 faster at districts than the previous year which had plain graphite. I'm in the process of shopping on your site and would value your opinion pinewood pro w/ moly.
Graphite with moly
- Thread starter Mike A.
- Start date
The fastest graphite does have Moly. All graphite is not the same when it comes to pinewood derby. The graphite I sell dominated the pinewood derby world before we broke through with oil.
DD4H graphite still dominates with scouts who are required to use graphite.
So we tried DD4H graphite on our car last year. To be honest we used another graphite to burnish the wheels, then switched to DD4H graphite, and I found that the wheels did not spin as well and the car was slower on our wooden test track. I then switched back to the graphite I burnished with and got faster times and the wheel spin sound was also a much better. We ran this car at the World champion ship race last year and did quite well. So I am wondering were our times with DD4H graphite worse because I didn't burnish with it? Or did we just discover a synergy between the DD4H and the other graphite? Or did we just have a bad batch of the DD4H graphite?
Yes we used the black ice polishing kit, love that stuff. It was last year so it didn't have the Red Rocket as the last step yet. We burnished with a larger flake graphite (MV) and used pledge on the axles. Maybe the other graphite or the combo works better with Pledge?
I have been told 
that with graphite you want the Red Rocket as the last step before adding graphite. I have also found that the more passes I make (within reason) the faster the cars get.
Curious, did you have the 3-step or the 4-step Black Ice? We also did the 4-step last year and had decent success, but it seems that the Red Rockect this year worked really well and maintained consistent times even after 16 runs with no additional graphite or wheel cleaning. Times varied approximately 0.004 on the 8 different lanes of a Scout track running next to different people. This difference was consistent from run #1 all the way thru run #16. The variance in each lane (from the first run in that lane to the second run in that lane) was only 0.0002. The main difference was the lane to lane discrepancy.
that with graphite you want the Red Rocket as the last step before adding graphite. I have also found that the more passes I make (within reason) the faster the cars get.Curious, did you have the 3-step or the 4-step Black Ice? We also did the 4-step last year and had decent success, but it seems that the Red Rockect this year worked really well and maintained consistent times even after 16 runs with no additional graphite or wheel cleaning. Times varied approximately 0.004 on the 8 different lanes of a Scout track running next to different people. This difference was consistent from run #1 all the way thru run #16. The variance in each lane (from the first run in that lane to the second run in that lane) was only 0.0002. The main difference was the lane to lane discrepancy.
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I also use DD4H graphite... it is faster than any other graphite I have tried. I would say if one were to have bad results while using it, look for the problem elsewhere. Alignment, wheel gap, or any other one of the mysteries of this hobby. Use John’s graphite and you will get faster times period!
We used the old 3 step the last 2 years, and with the World Cup in NYC we had very consistent times last year almost no change in times just like you. I am not sure what happened when I tried to use the DD4H graphite. It seems the wheels didn't sound as good dry spinning and the car was a little slower on track, when I put the other graphite on again I saw an improvement in track time and the wheel spinning on the axle was better also. Maybe I order another bottle of DD4H graphite. Maybe mine got some moisture in it one way or the other? This year we use Red Rocket for the first time and I really liked using it. Since we build a new car this year I cannot say how much impact the Red Rocket had but we were faster.
Thanks for the offer, great service as usual. I will be ordering some more products for sure. I will be happy to try the graphite with the Red Rocket. I was surprised with the results lats time. However I have heard of other people seeing a synergistic effect between two graphite's.
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