Race Day Inspection Horror Stories

[DuckOfAllTrades]

As inspection looms for my and my kids tonight, I am terrified of failing inspection! What if they find something wrong with our cars? All the hard work, prep and tuning go out the window as I quickly try to fix it, destroying the cars speed. Am I the only one whom has this fear? I've done everything by the books, but still, until the cars are inspected and passed, I'm going to be scared.

That got me thinking. Does anyone have any race day inspection horror stories they would be willing to share? Did your car fail inspection and had to do a last minute change?

This happened to me last year. It wasn't he worst it could have been, but killed my car and wasn't competitive. I had won the adult derby, that had basically no rules, so my car was a 3 wheel rail rider. When I arrived at districts, they would not pass my car because I only had 3 wheels touching! Race was in 10 minutes, so I had to forcefully bend the wheel down in the axle until it touched. Needless to say, I wasn't competitive. Lesson learned though: ALWAYS check the rules, they may be different from one level to the next.

 

[Dldoug]

I have a district horror story in general. One of my scouts not my kid but one from my pack entered his car in districts and it was pretty fast. We sat down and started watching all of the sudden the scouts dad looks at me as a leader drops a red car on the ground. He said I think that was my sons car. Well over the PA they called out his scouts name to come to the pits. Sure enough it was his car. It broke the corner of the front dominate wheel off to include the axle hole. Then they told him he had 5min to fix it. I was floored. This guy dropped the car to a complete wreck and then told him he only had 5 min to fix. Wow, needless to say it couldn’t be done without superglue so he pulled and and just left before he got into a conflict.
This event makes me dread districts every year.
Sorry so long but had to share. I totally get the nerves of check in.
This year I helped my two scouts get there cars ready last month after the pack race because I am in the Army and had a pending deployment overseas, so talk about nerves before districts. Lol. I won’t even be there for it this year.

 

[Zebracar]

We always have a work room set up at all of our pack and district races. That's usually my area of service for race day. I've replaced, lubricated and reattached many of wheels at last min. Also we've added and taken away weight. Last year I had to completely remove a spoiler from a car cause it didn't meet our dimension requirements. I always have a bag of tools including power tools to try and fix anything last min. Might not look pretty but they will race.

 

[Bubblegum]

Just go to World's in NYC.

 

[Pinewood Outlaw]

As the guy that runs the District derby my horror story is a simple one..........people that build their cars to exactly(or so they say) 5oz with no means of weight adjustment. Then coming to District and being over weight. We allow .04 over and every year I get a parent that swears they weighed their car on multiple scales and it was good. I can perform a scale calibration in front of them and place our certified test weight on it and show them it reads 5.000 but they will still say our scale is off. Lesson to be learned......if you build a car with max amount of weight you better have some way of making adjustments on race day. Personally I believe most people are weighing cars on a kitchen scale that can only measure 1/10 of a ounce.....so when does their scale go from 5.0 to 5.1......is it when it reaches 5.05 or is it 5.08 or some other number.

 

[IAE Racing]

oh my... ill be back after work

 

[bryan]

It's not an inspection, but our local bar league uses a wadded up hoodie and the wall as a backstop. My DFW shattered 3/4 of the way through racing, and I still finished fourth. The sounds the cars made when hitting the wall hurt my heart.

 

[Bw56]

HEY I resemble some of these remarks. But you should see what I see trying to be passed off that would not be fair to those that stayed within the rules. Truthfully I have yet to catch a "Scout" breaking the rules.

 

[Chief]

For those instances, that you need glue, I used to carry a super glue that had a catalyst that cured instantly. I buy it from CoolChem. Awesome stuff just get the glue and the activator. https://coolchem.com/products
A more budget friendly way but is very messy is to use baking soda...works great cures super glue super fast. but is not as strong as coolchems.

 

[DuckOfAllTrades]

To add to my own post, I shared this in my race day experience. I’m terrified of check in! Worried all that hard work tuning a car will be thrown out. This year they said one wheel was too much angled and I needed to fix it. I think he thought I was pulling one over on him! Truth is, the car had broke three times as well as endured a pre inspection surgery of making a wheel touch that didn’t touch. I was forced to pull and tug st the axle and wheel until it passed! The wheel was like that as it was the only way I could get the car tuned with all the breaking and piecing together. I was thankful it finally passed, but heart broken as I knew it would not be the same car with the wheel adjusted. Thankfully it was still fast! Sometimes you just need a little luck.

 

[Pinewood Outlaw]

To add to my own post, I shared this in my race day experience. I’m terrified of check in! Worried all that hard work tuning a car will be thrown out. This year they said one wheel was too much angled

Did he define what too much angle is?? I see rules that define no more than 10deg angle but often wonder how they check for it during inspection.

 

[DuckOfAllTrades]

Did he define what too much angle is?? I see rules that define no more than 10deg angle but often wonder how they check for it during inspection.

No, not at all. Just eyeballed it. What was crazy was my other car was just as much angled! And what was crazier is he stated "NO rail riding." Well...a canted back wheel does NOT make a rail rider! The front wheel was visibly angled so it was a rail rider, but he said nothing about it. I'm guessing he thought since my back wheel was slightly canted, that's what made it rid the rails.

 

[FDM]

No, not at all. Just eyeballed it. What was crazy was my other car was just as much angled! And what was crazier is he stated "NO rail riding." Well...a canted back wheel does NOT make a rail rider! The front wheel was visibly angled so it was a rail rider, but he said nothing about it. I'm guessing he thought since my back wheel was slightly canted, that's what made it rid the rails.

Maybe next time they need to state that only cars that wiggle are allowed to race.

 

[DuckOfAllTrades]

Maybe next time they need to state that only cars that wiggle are allowed to race.

That's exactly what they want!

All in all, there were 6 cars that I would consider fast all day out of 100! 2 that ranged from 3.72-3.73, 2 that ranged from 3.7-3.71, and the final two ( 3.68-3.7). The rest averaged 3.74-3.76. Now imagine how much better of a race it would have been if the rules were not so strict. Instead of 6 cars trying to win it all with extra hard work, attention to detail and some luck, you open it up to ALL cars. I guarantee those 6 knew all the tricks to do inside the rules, but those tricks were tough to come buy and difficult to achieve (I know on my part for this to be true). I had to be crafty and smart and precise. Open up the rules and you get 100 cars with tricks readily at hand and achievable to actually try to win!

 

[DuckOfAllTrades]

I’ll go a step further! Out of the top 10 cars, I bet not a single one was done solely by a scout! Parents were either very hands on and supervised at every step (me, I admit it) or did it for them.

 

[FDM]

Yeah, it's funny how by using stricter rules they want to make it more fair, but what they are only doing is giving the people with knowledge and even greater advantage. In my view the PWD is a learning experience and for every speed trick you can use there is lesson to be learned. Why is a railrider faster, why is a 3 wheeler faster, why is a longer wheel base faster and so on. By keeping the rules overly strict they are robbing the scout of a learning opportunity.

 

[DuckOfAllTrades]

Just occurred to me, and this is the most telling point! Of the 40 of 100 cars with “infractions,” no exaggeration, guess how many scouts I saw hammering and Dremeling to fix that infraction at inspection?

Not a single one.

 

[AceMontana]

Just occurred to me, and this is the most telling point! Of the 40 of 100 cars with “infractions,” no exaggeration, guess how many scouts I saw hammering and Dremeling to fix that infraction at inspection?



Not a single one.

OMG...i never thought of that!! Your absolutly correct...wow! What an eye opener.

 

[Pinewood Outlaw]

What you expect.....cub scouts using power tools???

 

[Pacfanweb]

Just occurred to me, and this is the most telling point! Of the 40 of 100 cars with “infractions,” no exaggeration, guess how many scouts I saw hammering and Dremeling to fix that infraction at inspection?

Not a single one.

Who cares? A car might be co-built by the parent and the kid, but if something needs to be done to it real fast, it's going to have to be the parent doing it.