A personal diversion from weather and climate. Readers may recall my earlier reference to this:
I’m proud to say that team Watts did pretty well today: William won first place in his den, and second overall in the pack where he competed with cars made by boys older than him.
I think the ears made the difference. Too much wind loading.
Watch the race below:
This is the final den race, the PokéMobile is of course the bright yellow one.
Here’s the final pack race. William is pounding the floor with anticipation, rooting his car on.
The PokéMobile takes a close second place.
Our secret: properly aligned and polished axles, plus graphite saturation and working it into the axle surface so that it stayed on during the race.
My son was beaming. So was daddy.
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Well done, Dad, on many accounts. Being with your son for this event elevates your ranking for many of us fathers. I still remember these derbies from my own Cub Scouting days many many moons ago, back when dinosaurs were roaming the earth. Thanks for sharing.
Ah…memories.
I built a hot red number back in the day when I was about ten, we put heavy bolts through the body to add “mid engine” weight, and I worked hard for a proper front nose to force that sucker to the track….many good tips above applied.
inexplicably, I lost my first heat. Then my mom saw all the dads lubing up wheeels with WD-40. She grabbed a can, lubed me up and voila, won from there out, first place!
thanks mom…
and job well done PokeMobile
Back when my kids were that age, our local Pack would run an “open” class for dads so the Cubs could get some action on their own, building and running their own cars. My secret to winning the open class was to maximize PE by putting the weight at the back, as someone already pointed out. Another trick (don’t know how effective it really is) is to make the car run on three wheels by lifting one wheel slightly.
The funnest event ever, at least for the twisted adults, was an “anything goes” competition, which included a few electric motors and one Estes rocket motor. Challenge: how to keep a rocket car on the track (and not burn the track down).
A great trick is to sharpen the ends of the spinning axles to points and make needle bearings which reduce friction to zero, like the balance wheel in a clock. cover the end bearings by eliminating the open wheel well, also decreasing wind resistance much worse than the ears….sort of like old school wheel pants like fixed landing gear planes.
As the car is NOT powered, make it LIFT from air over the wing-shaped body, reducing moving car downward force to almost zero, though the car is EXTRA MASS with lead fishing sinkers inside to gain speed down the ramp. Lift must never be enough to lift the car out of the track, of course. Max lift occurs at the bottom of the starting ramp. At that point, lift should make the extra-mass gravity car weigh nearly zero. Great fun to see their faces. Heavy cars go faster at the bottom of the ramp….it’s a delicate balance….like climate!
It’ll come shooting past the finish line like a rocket with enough mass and zero friction clock needle bearings, lubed with a single tiny drop of clock oil!
Old age and treachery always overcomes youth and skill…..(c;]
Congrats, like the videos. But I find it extremely strange that after playing them, YouTube links to the 999 video of the song “Homicide”. Maybe because it’s a song included in the latest Grand Theft Auto 4 video game?
And Dremel will sell you tools to make them http://www.dremelderby.com/default.aspx