Derby Talk

I think this rule will eliminate many racers from being able to race at this race: "Axles must be installed in the pre-cut slots provided by the kit manufacturer. Axles must not be canted/bent." All our cars were built with axle holes we drilled ourselves and we certainly bend one axle and...

Well, we got lucky with one of our MA cars this year. As we were watching the prelims of the open scout graphite division, we were wondering if we'd even make the finals or not. Turns out we were in 6th place out of 114 cars after the prelims. We were running times between 2.960 and 2.971. About wha...

Now that the build process is over, thought I'd ask those that are sending in cars for the MA race, how light you were able to get with your wheels? Given I don't have access to a lathe to do the wheels myself, I ended up purchasing them from a vendor. I spent $30 on some 1.4 gram wheels, which for ...

Good luck Knothead! You guys always bring the heat. If we are anywhere near you, we will be happy.

birddog

Nice work Team NoSkills! I ran into a similar issue with track setup (but reverse of yours). My track setup at Districts was faster than the track setup at our pack race (same track). Going forward, I've downloaded an angle measuring app on my smartphone and intend to measure the slope of the track ...

Made my 3 shipping boxes last night and got everything all packed up. Only minor damage to one car, which I was able to repair. Shipped them out over lunch today to the Mid-America team. They should be there by Saturday or Monday. Our part is now done. I sure hope Greg has plenty of volunteers lined...

My hand drill has 2 speeds, fast and slow. When I put it on slow, I don't seem to have a problem. Normally the fit is tight enough that I couldn't spin it fast and still be able to hold onto the wheel, so I usually just do it as fast as the tightness of the bore allows. I know of no way to make this...

Finished the testing and tuning last night. Probably could have spent more time on it, but I think we are "done" and ready to mail them in. All the cars were built identically, but there are some big differences in times. My adult car beats my son's graphite car by about .01 (which is a pr...

We (mostly) finished our cars yesterday. 1 open adult, 1 open scout oil and 1 open scout graphite. Tried a few new things this time around (more aggressive COM than we've ever done before), delrin washers and no paint on the sides. I'm going to dig the track out of the crawl space tonight, set it up...

Turned out only one car showed up with an extended wheel base (the person who gave me the heads up). I'm sure glad he gave us advance warning, not sure how I would have handled this at check in on race day (as I may not have been able to confirm the wrong rules were actually distributed). In any cas...

We have decided to do exactly as Stan suggests. Our budget can handle a few extra trophies (as I had some late registrations from some packs). My only dilemma at this point is whether I want to muddy the waters up front by telling the audience what we are doing and why before racing even starts. It ...

Thanks ngyoung. That is an interesting perspective on advantage of wheel base. Our "official" rules do allow shifting of the wheel base. My son's car employs that method while still using a 4 3/8" wheel base and I fully expect his car to finish at or near the top. I'm not worried abou...

We are scoring by time and I suspect I could setup GPRM to use subgroups and have "standard" as one subgroup and "extended" as the other sub group, but that still doesn't solve my trophy problem, unless I'm willing to defer handing out trophies to some subgroup of racers. I'll di...

Arghhhhh!!!! Does your racing format allow those who built to both rules to race together and to be ranked separately? No, we have 7 trophies we are giving out to the top 7 fastest cars. I suspect most folks built to the standard wheel base rule. I only know of 2 cars who have built to the extended...

Well, despite my best efforts to host a "fair" district race this year, I come to find out that a "rogue" copy of draft rules has gotten into the wild. I've had my official rules posted to the district web site since October, but I've just learned 3 days before the race that an &...