Guiness World Record Attempt

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deandunlap
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Location: Great Falls, MT

Guiness World Record Attempt

Post by deandunlap »

Our Royal Ranger Outpost in Great Falls, Montana recently attempted to make the tallest and longest pinewood derby race track. We are getting our statistics together to submit to Guinness but have no knowledge of what the tallest and longest track is. Does anyone have that information??? I have noticed that the Indiana State Museum said they have the world record of 20 feet high and 125 feet long that was set on Jan 6, 2008. Guinness does not have anything listed on their website or in any newer edition books. The engineers reports we are still waiting on, but I'm guessing we are over 24 feet tall and over 190 feet long with loopty loops and more corners than you can shake a stick at. We ran this track on March 1, 2008. :?:
doct1010
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Re: Guiness World Record Attempt

Post by doct1010 »

deandunlap
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Re: Guiness World Record Attempt

Post by deandunlap »

For the record. The tracks name is Goliath. It was built so that very few cars could finish. Every participate was aware of the risk of their cars. If cars make it past the finish line but not to the end of the run out that is just fine. It was suppose to be a challenge of a different kind. The kids loved it. Every single car made it through the loopty loops - every one. It was the corners that were the problems. The directives given to the kids last fall were that if you wanted to run on this track you had to have a car with a very low center of gravity. Alignment of the wheels had no impact at all on the cars leaving the track - it was all about center of gravity. This was a Royal Ranger track but Boy Scouts brought their cars to race as well. Absolutely nothing about this track was to be fair - it was known up front. The kids wanted it and thats what they got. I'm afraid that they will want it again next year and we will have to put it back up again. A standard 32 foot track was used for kids that also wanted to do Best of Show on their cars and didn't want them broke. But before the day was over every car that showed up raced Goliath. It was a challenge every kid decided to take. The kids that had cars that finished are heros - they will never forget the day they beat Goliath. As for the record attempt - it is secondary to the primary purpose of the track. We ask kids to build a car, then let it race a few times for 2.5 - 3.0 seconds and call it a good derby - what a bore. The cars that raced on Goliath had race times of 45 - 55 seconds with battles for the lead changing 5 -6 times each race. When a car would crash it also took out other cars as well. Many cars came off the track at above 12 feet - hit the floor and broke. Then were put back together and raced again - kinda like real racing. I don't know how we will get the kids to ever race a standard boring track again.
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Nitro Dan
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Re: Guiness World Record Attempt

Post by Nitro Dan »

Does anyone have any pictures or video they can post of Goliath? The ones in the articles of the "Great Falls Tribune" don't show a whole lot of it and probably aren't doing it much justice.

-Nitro Dan
Take good and make it great. Take fast and make it faster. Performance drives success!
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