How to Make the Best Pinewood Derby Car

by kevstew

34721

Intro: How to Make the Best Pinewood Derby Car

This is a tutorial on how to make a pinewood derby car using simple machines and a bit of physics to make the optimal car.

STEP 1: Cutting Your Car

First thing you will need to do is cut your car. Try to make it semi-aerodynamic so that you create less drag as you go down the track. An inclined plane is a great option that is easy to cut and fairly aerodynamic.

STEP 2: Sanding the Car to a Flat Angle

Now, unless you are an amazing wood cutter and make perfect cuts in wood, your going to need to sand down some imperfections that you made while cutting. If you made some gauging cuts, start with 60 grit sandpaper, if you cut it pretty well, start at 100 grit and move your way up to 220, or higher if you so desire.

STEP 3: Attaching the Wheels and Axles

In order to have the least amount of rolling resistance on the track and have a light weight wheel to not use up out precious potential energy, were going to need to mod a few things. First, clamp the nail to a work bench and have part of it hanging off the edge. Second, tap it with a hammer so you bend the nail just a bit. Third, repeat with all the nails. Next, we are going to sand down the wheels so that they are lighter. Sand down both sides of the wheel however much you would like. I sanded them a bit but nothing to extreme, you still need some wheel there. After that, just put the nails through the hole in the wheel and push the nail into the axles in the car. You can use a hammer to get them in there too if you couldn't push them in.

STEP 4: Weights

Since the rules say your car can weigh up to 5oz, we want to make it as close to 5oz to get the full use out of the weight. Now, the placement of the weight is very important in the cars performance. The best place to put the weights for the car is around an inch in front of the rear axle. This allows for a very high potential energy without having the car pop a wheelie down the track. For my weights, I took a piece of duct tape and rolled some pennies up in it. I used 13 pennies to get closest to 5oz, but your mileage may very. I then hot glued that roll of pennies to the car and then duct taped that to the car aswell so its going no where.

STEP 5: Finished

Now that you are done with your car, take it to the pinewood derby and dominate the competition.

Comments