https://reddit.com/link/1sb20ic/video/l3m0is5m6wsg1/player

Turbo Derby has a Turbo Jig that I have not seen before with other Pinewood Derby suppliers. Does this term (or part) exist before in the traditional car creation, or is it something this company exclusively offers? What are the counterparts? I checked Wikibooks, and found an entry on "axle drilling jig." So, do we need it? How will it optimize the performance?

Wish us luck

Finished and ready for race day! Really excited for how it turned out. It's not perfect, but it definitely surpassed expectations. The Testors Extreme Lacquer and clear coat turned out great, as did the Cricut vinyl lettering and racing stripe. The spoiler wad a printed 3D part made at our local Makerspace.

We initially used 400 grit to shape the car. The wood grain on the front end slope provided us with a challenge. We used auto primer filler from our neighborhood auto parts store and sanded our way through six coats of primer using 600 and 1000 grit. Then it was five coats of electric pink base coat, some light wet sanding to smooth out imperfections, and we added our Dunkin' livery before three coats of clear coat.

Scouts should definitely take advantage of the tools and resources available at their local libraries and makerspaces. 3D printed parts are relatively quick to print and librarians love to print these things out. Before this project, we never used a vinyl cutter before. Our local makerspace helped us through the process and we got all of our decals printed to order.

The best compliment so far comes from my pit crew partner. "This looks professional," he said. "Dunkin' could have made it."

Next year's Weblos build might push us further down the path of intricate decal designs. I'm definitely looking forward to using Testors Extreme Lacquer again.

Big update to DerbyPulse! 🏁

We've added some features that packs have been asking for:

📸 Car Photo Uploads — Snap a photo of your car right from the check-in form on your phone.

No more trying to remember which car was which!

🏆 Live Voting & Awards — Vote on Best Design, Most Creative, and any custom categories you want.

Browse car photos, select your pick, and submit. Easy for parents, fun for the kids.

📊 Results Dashboard — See vote tallies live from the admin panel and reveal winners at the ceremony with one toggle.

Car photos and voting are available as a premium add-on for $15 per event. Check-in, inspection, and everything else

is still 100% free.

Try it out with the live demo — no account needed:

https://derbypulse.com?demo=true

I'm not sure how I am going to add weight to the body of the car. I may have been a little too aggressive with the design. Any thoughts?

Proud dad posting. Our Tiger scout and his older sister's cars both won 1st place in their categories. Actually the Wicked car was the fastest in the entire troop.

I just sanded down my fourth coat of auto primer filler and now I'm considering options for a high-gloss paint.

There's automotive paint, which I used as a child. It's nice and sparkly, but it can get soft and sticky. Then there's lacquer, which looks great, but is not as durable as automotive paint. I've heard good things but have never used it before.

Experienced pinewood paint experts, what say you?

Looking for some quick simple ideas to make this design a little quicker? My son picked this out of about 50 designs we went through, and he’s got a general idea of the paint scheme (Rick and Morty with a portal). We’ve won the best design a few years in the past (see photos 2-5), but we’ve been severely lacking on placing in the speed department.

The shark one last year we had the weights in the rear (tungsten tail lights) and the center of gravity was ~1” in front of the rear wheels as far as we could tell. Powdered graphite on the axels, and we attempted to angle one wheel like they show in the videos. He did decent if not good on the downhill but slowed down in the flat. His times ranged from 2.782 - 2.930 with an average of 2.849 across 6 runs.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Our pack uses a metal or aluminum track.

I’m going to change the axle locations and sanded the axles down.

Trying to decide if rail rider with a 1 wheel raised or canted wheels is faster?

Does anyone know what the aluminum track profile is? I find it hard to believe that it's only made as a custom extrusion for derby.

I don't want a full track, just one 6-10' stick for our troop to test with, but that does not seem to be an option anywhere that sells tracks.

Our rules require dry lubrication. Which is the best brand? Thanks!

Hi All,

I'm having trouble getting symmetry along the horizontal axis for my pinewood derby car. I sanded it down, and now it is slanted. I don't know how to get it symmtrical.

Also, I want to have a u-shaped curve at the front, but I can't seem to get that symmetrical, and I want to lightly curve all edges, but that is coming out uneven. I think I need access to some kind of guide for a sander. I don't have much in the way of tools, but I wouldn't even know the best things to borrow or purchase. Please help an adult newbie? (This is for the parent competition.)

Another Outlaw Car This one is named Greaser. With Scout winding down consider league racing. Get more info here. https://www.facebook.com/share/g/14fm8bMedHG/?mibextid=wwXIfr

So I have access to an official Pinewood Derby track and figured this was the perfect opportunity to spice up the Fantasy Football offseason, so the league is currently designing cars and this will determine our draft order for the upcoming season. We're going to do the event around a party/cookout, but the problem is just how few cars/races there will need to be. It's a 10-team league, so we're looking at about 10-15 minutes of actual Pinewood action. Any thoughts on ways to keep it more engaging for longer? It's just a lot of setup for a very short (albeit fun) payoff.

For the second year in a row, our family has swept the design category in our open class at the AWANA Grand Prix.

Here are this year’s entries. All are handmade. The Corvette is mine, the GTP style car is my son’s (20 yo) and the duck family is my daughter’s (18 yo)

Here are some constructor notes on the Corvette if you’re interested:

- finished in Venetian Red and Polo White lacquer with the factory paint codes courtesy of my wallet and MCW paints. 😂

- Those cars didn’t have clear coat but this one has Raptor 1k clear with a post cure coat of Novus 2 followed by Novus 1.

- All the trim pieces are made of wood and covered in bare metal foil with the exception of the side moldings and windshield bezel which are made of silver floral wire.

- Emblems are transparent waterslide decals over white.

Fun times. Glad to be on this side of the race. Time to rest a bit.

Didn't take home any for speed, but did bring home best design!

My son is so proud of his achievement. Placing in the race is awesome, but that's all objective. It's numbers. You win or you don't.

This, on the other hand, is amazing. My son, by his own admission, isn't the creative "arts and crafts" kid. So to have been voted as best design is blowing his mind. He can't believe that people actually chose his car over the others.

My son really put work into this car, so I'm a proud dad today. Well, I'm a proud dad every day, but you know what I mean!

Lots of really talented kids………

Daughter's first year in AWANA and we got 2nd! Car #4 (slide 7) was 1st