Happy new year and hello to everyone here on this board! Can't tell you how glad I am to have found and joined this forum.
I'll try to keep this one brief, and come back later with the pile of questions I have.
A little history and an idea of why I joined.
2 years ago I helped 2 of my kids with their first PWD race. I had never built a derby car before and neither kid was crazy about building the cars so I did most of the work. The kids basically just picked a design, helped glue in weights and painted. My son's car finished middle of the pack, but my daughter racing in sibling class, had the fastest car there. It didn't win any awards because it was a sibling car but it sure got the attention of everyone there. Including me and the rest of my family.
The design she'd picked was a very small car that looked kind of like a formula 1 car. I hadn't even thought about weighting it when I cut it out. I ended up hollowing out just about the whole body and filling it full of weights and even gluing a couple small flat weights to the top. The web turned up a wealth (overload) of info so I used a few tricks like lifting one front wheel and canting the other three.
OK, so after that race the whole family was charged up and wanted to build fast PWD cars. The following year we all gathered in the garage for several weekends and worked to build cars. Using the lessons we'd stumbled on the year before, both kids, my wife, and I built tiny cars crammed full of weights. We set up a drill in a vice and polished axles until they shined like a mirror. Carefully canted axles and did our best to test for straight true running cars.
Race day was unbelievable. Both kids finished first in their groups and my wife and I were 1st and 2nd in adult outlaw class (15 oz cars.) Again drawing a LOT of attention from the other racers there.
So that brings me here. We worked really hard to make those cars fast but really didn't even know what we were doing. Its race time again and we're getting ready to start car building. This year though I have been reading a lot more and can't help but wonder what in the world to do to make even faster cars. The rules are a little tighter this year for outlaw class and there are things that I want to try, but I'm scared they may slow me down. So I'll be back regularly to ask questions and get your opinions and let you all know how things go!
I'll try to keep this one brief, and come back later with the pile of questions I have.
A little history and an idea of why I joined.
2 years ago I helped 2 of my kids with their first PWD race. I had never built a derby car before and neither kid was crazy about building the cars so I did most of the work. The kids basically just picked a design, helped glue in weights and painted. My son's car finished middle of the pack, but my daughter racing in sibling class, had the fastest car there. It didn't win any awards because it was a sibling car but it sure got the attention of everyone there. Including me and the rest of my family.
The design she'd picked was a very small car that looked kind of like a formula 1 car. I hadn't even thought about weighting it when I cut it out. I ended up hollowing out just about the whole body and filling it full of weights and even gluing a couple small flat weights to the top. The web turned up a wealth (overload) of info so I used a few tricks like lifting one front wheel and canting the other three.
OK, so after that race the whole family was charged up and wanted to build fast PWD cars. The following year we all gathered in the garage for several weekends and worked to build cars. Using the lessons we'd stumbled on the year before, both kids, my wife, and I built tiny cars crammed full of weights. We set up a drill in a vice and polished axles until they shined like a mirror. Carefully canted axles and did our best to test for straight true running cars.
Race day was unbelievable. Both kids finished first in their groups and my wife and I were 1st and 2nd in adult outlaw class (15 oz cars.) Again drawing a LOT of attention from the other racers there.
So that brings me here. We worked really hard to make those cars fast but really didn't even know what we were doing. Its race time again and we're getting ready to start car building. This year though I have been reading a lot more and can't help but wonder what in the world to do to make even faster cars. The rules are a little tighter this year for outlaw class and there are things that I want to try, but I'm scared they may slow me down. So I'll be back regularly to ask questions and get your opinions and let you all know how things go!
