Unfortunately we had one car enter in the show, and that was it. When I told my son that the car show was going to be cancelled here's how the conversation went in my head:
Me: The car show only had one entry, so we had to cancel it. We’re moving your car over to the race instead.
Him: Ok
Here's how it really went.
Me: The car show only had one entry…
Him: interrupting Cool! That means I will win all of the prizes! Hard to argue with how he thinks!
Me: No, I am sorry, but that’s not how it’s going to work. The car show was cancelled, and we moved your car over to the race.
Him: Appears very upset But that’s not fair!
Me: I know it’s not what you wanted, but you’ll still get to participate in the race.
Him: But my car was slow! I don’t want to race it…
Me: Well, we have some options. We can withdraw your car and you won’t have anything to do He shakes his head or we can pull out the wheels and axles and try to work on them some more he shrugs or we can try to build a new car.
Him: I want to build a new car, and I want it to be fast!
Me: We can certainly try, but we won’t be able to test it because the pack race is over, and we don’t have as much time since there’s only two weeks. We have to build it this week and paint it next week, and it won’t be fancy.
Him: Okay, so I want to build insert incredibly complex car design idea here…
Me: It has to be a simple design, or we won’t get it done in time.
The conversation went on from there. Ultimately we came up with an idea that was roughly based on a sports car profile, with fenders. He drew out the profile, and he worked with me to drill out the wheel holes in the fenders and cut out the profile from the derby block. He helped glue the fenders on the car. He used the “mouse” sander and hand sanded as well, and he drilled all of the holes for the weights. I had to work with some wood putty as the weight holes were dangerously close to the top surface of the car; in fact they poked through in a couple of spots. Poor measuring / planning on my part.
The paint was going to be gold with black stripes. To do that we painted the entire car with gray primer and then wet-sanded it smooth. From there we painted the top and then the bottom of the car with glossy black paint. Unfortunately when I picked up the car after painting the bottom, part of the top was still wet enough that a chunk of paint peeled off where it had been resting on some waxed paper.
That meant more wet sanding and repainting of the black on the top.Because of the time frame involved, we no longer had the time left to wait for the black paint to dry long enough to be able to tape off the stripe pattern. So instead we used the gold paint and did a “shading” effect. We painted the nose of the car only, and let the gold paint over spray flow towards the back of the car. That way there was no taping, just paint on top of paint. We finished that on Thursday. On Friday I had to go to the church to set up the track and laptop and decorations, and my older boy went to an iBot tournament. I ducked out of the derby setup long enough to see a little bit of the iBot tournament. I gave my younger son a bunch of nails and he went through and picked out the straight ones, and then later that night I polished them for him. He was going to do it, but I didn't get back until after 11pm and he was long in bed by then. Racing was the next day.
So I polished the axles and installed the wheels and called it a night. I had no idea if it ran straight, and I only had an older scale so I really could not weigh it. At weigh in the next morning it was 4.92 so I added some lead tape and we were off to the races.
As it turned out, he placed second in the Bear den at district, losing only one race. The race he lost was very close, by about an inch, to the eventual district winner. He had fun and I had fun. But my favorite district derby memory came later on that day. One of the other scout parents came up to me and told me that my son had gone over to his son who was quite upset that he didn't win anything and gave him words of encouragement, saying that he really liked the paint job and that he (the other scout) had made a really cool car. Dad was really pleased to see that and shared it with me, which made me feel wonderful as you can imagine.
Mom later came by and told me the same thing.
Here's the car we entered for the district race.
Another from a slightly different angle
It was an extended wheelbase as you can see. The weight was done with tungsten cylinders right in front of the rear axle. The top profile was cut, and then I cut the car to about 1/4" think by following the same profile from underneath. After that cut we glued on the fenders to restore the "car" look, if that makes sense. We used the dremel to shape the fenders and lots of sanding to smooth everything out. Gray primer, glossy black main coat, and gold metallic overspray for the finish. Interestingly enough the gold paint instructions specifically said NOT to use clear coat on top, so we didn't.
Our district races are the same way in that they say the kids can enter for show only but as far as I know no one did.