Pinewood Derby!

[JohnnyEgo]

My son just competed in his first Pinewood Derby today. For those of you who do not have children or have lived under a rock, this is a Cub Scout thing where they race cars made out of blocks of pine. In theory, the boys are supposed to make the cars themselves under careful adult supervision. The level of parent involvement is supposed to vary by age. In my case, it was 95% parent, 5% kid. My child is a Tiger Scout, which is on the very young side of the curve (6 years old). He also has the attention span of a fruit fly, and managed to cut himself on his school pencil box, so there was no way I was going to let him near a power tool. He got to pick out the design by looking at truck pictures on Google. He picked the paint scheme, and I also let him use the white spray paint, which I will be scraping off my floor later tonight.

Fortunately for me, he picked a 60s Chevy C10, which is fairly boxy. I cut the fenders and cab out of a spare piece of 2x4, then cut the profiles on the table saw and router. The cab was done slowly by hand chisel, and made passable in appearance courtesy of wood filler.




A couple coats of Zinser sealing primer by my boy.




A tape job by Dad.

[JohnnyEgo]

I had a bunch of super-glossy black tractor and implement spray paint. I thought the truck looked pretty decent in all black, but my son wanted the two tone.


When we pulled off the tape, there was quite a contrast between the glossy black and the matte primer.



Fortunately, a coat of satin poly made everything a fairly even blend of matte.



My son's Tiger den was pretty big, with 12 cars in the race. My friend built his son a pretty decent Humvee. I thought I had done a good job of hollowing out Vincent's car, but the Humvee was damned near a paper thin shell. I was impressed.


Somebody's Dad is very talented.


I brought a tool box to registration night, and spent a bunch of time helping parents tweak their cars. Some had track clearance issues, some were out of spec, and a fair amount were over-weight. Fortunately, with a little hammering, chiselling, drilling, and a lot of hot melt glue, we were able to get every one to qualify.

[JohnnyEgo]

The first race may have been the most attention my son has ever paid to anything in his life.


They ran each car on all four lanes and then added the scores to get a cumulative. This helped isolate the effects of lane position, and there was one very fast lane.




My son's truck ran surprisingly well. There is a very specific design science to building a fast car. They are mostly low profile wedges with carefully positioned weights and a specific center of gravity. Trucks have a hard time competing with this design because they are front heavy and have most of their weight distribution towards the front axle. I hollowed the crap out of my son's car and positioned the weights to bring the center of gravity exactly to the middle, but there wasn't much to be done about the aerodynamics, and I knew that going in. Still, he wanted a truck, not a narrow wedge of wood with wheels, so I built him a truck. It actually ran very well, consistently taking second place every time, regardless of track position. Not enough to be in the top 10% of the overall pack, but he did win 3rd place in his group of 12.


I was talking to some other Dads about the local school, and within a moment, two of us realized we knew one another from this board. I ran into jreifsch80 (Rachel Ray of AKs), who has a son in the other pack. He had a black Charger that ran very well, also taking 3rd place in his bracket.

All in all, it was a good time. My son won a trophy and learned the value of being magnanimous in victory. I got to enjoy the sense of crushing domination over the cars and aspirations of lesser parents. We're both looking forward to next year's competition.

[Fentonite]

That's very cool. Thanks for sharing it.

[brutal]

Don't they still do a parent division?

When our boys were in Scouts, there was of course a level of parent/kid involvement, but there was also an adult only division where the Dads (or Moms) could show off their own as well.

I guess now we don't want any of the kids to feel bad? On the other hand, the kids were always the ones bragging about Pop's car winning whatever category and such.

Regardless, it's such a great character building event.

P.S. How did the cheese do? I LOL at that one.

[20X11]

Now THAT brings back memories from nearly 5 decades ago.

[ray1970]

Looks like your kid did a solid job on his 5%. Probably made up for your 95%.

[JohnnyEgo]

Sadly, the Cheese did not stand alone.
On the other hand, the Pickle finished in the top of the whole group.

There is indeed a parents & "Outlaws" league. It was dominated by the pack leadership and folks who had kids in multiple tiers of scouting. I thought about entering a car of my own, but didn't have the time.


It is a lot different then in my day. I was 'older' when I joined Cub Scouts (10 or 11), and it was expected that the older boys do most of the construction. It was also a wooden track with a couple of flags at the end. This time out, it was a carefully crafted aluminum track with a computer controlled gate and timer accurate to 1/100th of a second. Some folks take this stuff very seriously.

[Irving]

Our daughter placed in her grade for the group science fair this year, without ANY involvement from me, and very little from mom. We were very proud of her. However, her excitement at placing awakened a monster inside me and all I can think about is having her make a solar powered aquaponic garden for next year in an attempt to take first place, in the district for all of 1-12th grade. I don't want to look like the parent that does the project for the kid, but that sweet truck you made makes me have second thoughts.

[kidicarus13]

What the...!!!