Ideal pre-paint weight for a 5oz BSA car?

[scubadiver6]

Hello all -

First post. First time building a pinewood derby car since 1983!

Does anybody have any suggestions/guidelines as to the pre-paint weight my son's car should be? (I have no real world experience knowing how much weight the primer and paint will add to the car)

My son is racing in his pack's PWD in a few weeks. 5oz max weight.

Currently, here are my weights:

Body = 4.325
Body w/ Axles and Wheels = 4.787

(FYI - I have confidence in my scale as I can read calibration weights with 100% accuracy.)

My plan is a coat of spray primer, 2-3 coats of spray paint, and 2-3 coats of high gloss spray lacquer - sanding between each of the above coats. (Our paint job will be very minimal as my 8 yr old will be doing it himself.)

Any input if my pre-paint weight is too heavy, too light, or on the money?

Thank you!

 

[IAE Racing]

I think that weight would be damn close! (depending on number of coats and how thick) It would better to be a touch light and add a bit of putty to bring it up. you can also use aluminum tape (air duct tape) or even layers of clear packing tape to bring it up to your final weight.

 

[sondo007]

I painted a car with primer and 3 coats of the spray and it was less than an 1oz of change it .03oz. So get the car as close to 5oz then add the paint. Like IAE send if you use the aluminium tape you can just pull off and drop weight or just drill very small holes in the front of car to drop the weight.

 

[Kinser Racing]

Welcome to the forum. I don't paint anymore. When I did paint (I went by grams) I would usually put about 20 or so grams of primer, paint and clear on the car. I would let it dry, weigh it and bring it up to my total weight by painting. 20 grams of paint is quite a bit of paint. But, I used Duplicolor Primer Filler, it's thick and heavy.

 

[scubadiver6]

Thank you everybody... Never even though of using aluminum tape!

So if I brought the weight of the car up to 4.9-ish, and then paint, do you guys think I'd be OK?

I have a package of tungsten spheres... Using 5 spheres, I can bring the weight of the car up to 4.931 - pre-paint.

So perhaps use 4 spheres and then paint?

 

[IAE Racing]

cover the whole for your spheres with tape and add as needed.

 

[bracketracer]

Welcome to the forum. I don't paint anymore. When I did paint (I went by grams) I would usually put about 20 or so grams of primer, paint and clear on the car. I would let it dry, weigh it and bring it up to my total weight by painting. 20 grams of paint is quite a bit of paint. But, I used Duplicolor Primer Filler, it's thick and heavy.

20 grams! Wow! That is a ton of paint. I build mine two grams light to allow for paint. I use lacquer paint though, no heavy surfacer. For an eight year old painter I would leave a little more room. My son likes to hold the can about an inch from the surface, he puts it on a lil heavy!

 

[OPARENNEN]

Lots of guys in our league also stopped painting, and just colored their car with colored pens (forgot the name, but used for highlighting in/on books & documents.) I stopped painting also, and use that very thin Monokote. When getting the car to the proper weight, I just cut two pieces of the Monokote to the exact size, set them on top of the raw car when setting the tungsten (obviously with wheels and axles also). The Monokote rolls are so thin, that they weigh next to nothing. In my earlier experience painting, with primer, color and clearkote, there is a lot of weight up front where you don't want it.

 

[resullivan]

We didn't paint last year either. I sat there thinking about how much work I did to remove as much wood as possible, and there we were adding it right back with paint. .03 oz is quite a bit of wood. We had 3 cars last year. One we covered with the aluminum tape which looked pretty cool. The second we just stained, and the 3rd we used monokote.