Pinewood Pregame

Saturday is Pinewood Derby day at Cub Scouts. My car is all built and painted. It just needs weights, wheels, and axles added. My inspiration for the car was a Hot Wheels car named "Little Red Roadster." LRR is a many time champion in gravity racing on the Hot Wheels circuit, so I figured this would also be an excellent pinewood design since pinewood cars are also gravity powered. One design modification I made was to replace the LRR design, which is gray with a stylized "S" on the sides, to a more traditional (and presumably faster) flame design on the sides of the vehicle.

Daddy is mostly concerned with the speed engineering elements of the design. He found a website with advice for maximizing speed. Here's one odd little tip--it turns out that sanding the axles is helpful. Since the axles are nails, there is some scoring on the side of each near the head, presumably to help them stay nailed to whatever it is they're nailed too. However, this scoring creates additional friction, so sanding it down produces more speed. Of course, we're also going with carefully applied graphite. We also learned that the optimal weight placement is just in front of the rear axles. Mommy bought a bunch of weights and a very precise scale, so we can hit the weight max exactly. Wish me luck!