Son won pack, now to deal with district rules

[RSR]

After 4th place pack finishes for the previous 3 years, plus a 2nd place at districts last year my Webelos 1 won our pack race this past Saturday. He put in a lot of work cutting 1/4" bodies with me, gluing on topsheets, sanding fenders, polishing axles & wheel bores. So after much dust, wax and spray while appointing me official CA glue handler he put down an average of 2.367 on a 32ft MW Freedom Track. There were only three runs under 2.400 from the one other scouts car in both den and finals heats. The car was built using stock BSA axles, wheels and blocks prepped by he and I working together. Thank you zkinser, GravityX and the others here who gave me advice.
Car built with drilled with 2.8* canted rears as best as we can estimate. District rules are pretty strict about axles stating:
Axles - Only the nails furnished with Kit #17006, #17000 or the wheel accessory kits see #7) are allowed. They must be installed parallel to the bottom of the car as to run parallel with the track.

Updated district rules were sent out last week. So I guess we are left to run axles bent down in order to remove enough cant to pass visual inspection. There goes the easy alignment of canted axle holes.

 

[Quicktimederby]

Well done! Car looks like a prefect candidate the Box Stock class at the NPWDRL. If you thought the scout race was fun, you ain't seen nothing yet.

 

[RSR]

Thanks for all of the advice. Won districts with car untouched from pack race. It went in a ziploc on race day and came out yesterday for districts. The dad operating the gate told me he has never seen a run under 3.06 on their 42' BestTrack. It ran 3.034 - 3.037 for 4 heats and never lost a heat at pack or district.

2016 District Camp

From 2015 District 2nd

 

[NeedforSpeed]

RSR...those rules sound very familiar. Whats your pack #?

 

[Kinser Racing]

Congratulations

 

[Crash Enburn]

Definite congratulations!

What became of the "axles must be parallel to the track"?

 

[RSR]

Thanks for the congratulations.  Just to be clear our district really does put on a good race.  It is very well organized, the boys get to place the cars on the track themselves and we had scouts from 15 packs present.  

NeedForSpeed - Our pack has not adopted the parallel to track yet.  The Cherokee District of Lincoln Heritage Council included the line in their rules.  I think it is just a case of someone using a set of rules from a prior source that have a vague rule from before a lot of people were made aware of the benefit of canted rear axles.  

Crash Enburn - Nothing became of the "axles must be parallel to the track" rule.  We prepped a second car that had been built with flat axle holes.  My son handed his primary car over for check in inspection and they sat it in their box made to check sizing and rail clearance, weighed it and that was that.  The council representative that sent out the rules and a member of the pack that was providing the host track were the check in judges.  I am not sure what the story is there, but I saw other cars that were top 5 cars with bent axles.  I was a "Best of Show" and other categories judge so I got a chance to eyeball that.

 

[RBE17]

Congratulations on your win. Thank you for posting the race results with times. When I compare our district times to yours I can see we have a lot of room to improve as we are seconds off the mark.

 

[Crash Enburn]

Congratulations on your win. Thank you for posting the race results with times. When I compare our district times to yours I can see we have a lot of room to improve as we are seconds off the mark.

RBE: Keep in mind that the numbers you see are cumulative of four runs on what is probably a 42' Best Track. If you're off by seconds, then you might very well be looking at 6 runs (maybe with the slow time dropped), or a very different track — like one that starts flat, then rolls over the hill.

And then we have all the variations regarding the slope angle, timer type and position, etc.

 

[RBE17]

RBE: Keep in mind that the numbers you see are cumulative of four runs on what is probably a 42' Best Track. If you're off by seconds, then you might very well be looking at 6 runs (maybe with the slow time dropped), or a very different track — like one that starts flat, then rolls over the hill.

And then we have all the variations regarding the slope angle, timer type and position, etc.

I compared our four run total (and the winners' four run total) and we have a long way to go. I'm not sure what length track we have (either a 35' or 42' best track). I will say the district host track looked pretty beat compared to our pack's track. Either way, I'm not deterred as I know we will get faster. Both my 7 year old scout and my 9 year old daughter want to build cars to race w/ you guys so we will be ready to go for next year's race.

Later,

Steve.

 

[RSR]

The picture in post #1 shows times from our pack race on a 32 foot MicroWizard Freedom track. Oliver's car ran a cumulative time over 4 runs of 9.477 seconds. The individual runs spread between for an average of 2.369 sec. per run. I spent a lot of time on setup night making sure all of the track sections mated up smoothly to minimize any differences between left and right steer dominant cars. I really like the track surface, adjust ability and how it can be stored compactly. However, it does appear to have a less aggressive start hill than a BestTrack. As I know the kids like the scale speed we set the software up at 29.5' length from start pin to finish on 1:25 scale. The boys throughout the pack start to recognize that fast cars break 200 mph as the racing goes on. When we got to the Webelos 1 den and they were putting up 205 - 210+ mph speeds all the cubbies got excited. The real race for my son ever since his Tiger year has mainly been just to advance out of his den as that is where most of the competition is.

The pictures in post# 3 show the Trophy finishers from both this and last year's district races. Those races are run on a 42ft BestTrack and the setup is not quite as clean as you see and hear cars getting jostled on some of the lane section joints. I don't have experience setting up a BestTrack but from what I have read on this forum they can require a little more work to get smooth but the start hill and transition generate more speed. Again at the district races those are cumulative times for 4 runs.

The car never lost a race out of 8 heats at pack race that qualified it for his 4 runs at districts. The race was won on the flats as it generally did not have a big lead, if any out of the transition. At the 3/4 point of each track it almost always had at least a car length lead. I have no doubt that is the result of axle angle, oil and wheel bore prep techniques we learned on this forum that made for the leap in performance this year. The dad operating the start gate told me he had not seen a time under 3.06 on that track in the 4 years he has been there for their pack race and districts, before my son swept it Saturday with four runs at 3.035 average

Now that he has essentially set a track record on the district track he isn't so worried about out and out speed now. His plan is to try and build a street rod class car along the lines of Skippy Kicky's GT40. The problem is identifying a 1:25 scale Le Mans style model car body that fits within the 7"l x 2.75"w dimensions rule. The goal will be to not get smoked while being seen. I suspect he will have to try and qualify for next year's district at the district open race in the morning before the championships. I doubt a street stock car can win his den to prequalify for districts after he took everyone in the pack to school this year.

I think our pack will change to an 8 run format next year, with each car going down each lane twice and the software pulling out den and overall winners at the end. We run separate dens and advance the top 3 to grand finals currently. There was grumbling from some parents that the current format puts so much focus on the fastest cars. I am down with every boy that builds a car getting 8 runs and having fun as we only have about 40 cars. That would be 80 runs with an intermission without the downtime between dens and finals that we have now. In the end the winners still have to be consistently fastest.