The Pinewood Derby



The much anticipated Pinewood Derby was held last Friday night.  In preparation, Andrew's den made these really cute neckerchief slides.  It is a piece of molding that was cut and then a piece of pipe added to the bottom.

 

Danny and Andrew spent a lot of time looking at pictures on the internet for car ideas for the derby.  He finally settled on a convertible Lamborghini.  My dad helped us add some fenders and cut in the seats to our block of pine that we received.  He also helped us with the wheel alignment.  He might be a master at this after many races with my brothers.

 

 

Andrew wanted to paint the car orange, so we got some orange spray paint.  I bought glossy because I thought that would be faster than having to spray it with gloss at the end.  After we sprayed it orange we taped off the areas for the windows, but when we went to remove the blue tape, part of the window paint also came off because the orange paint was so slick.  Lesson learned.

 

Andrew still enjoyed painting the seats, the lights and the windows.  It didn't turn out exactly like the inspiration piece, but Andrew didn't mind.

 

The race was on Friday night, but they wanted the scouts to come Thursday night to get checked in and "checked out".  The cars have to be inspected to make sure that all of the rules are being followed.  Unfortunately Andrew's car had an issue with the wheels.  All four wheels have to be touching the ground at the same time.  His was off by the thickness of a sheet of paper. We put several heavy books on top of the car overnight hoping that the problem would resolve itself, but it did not.  Finally we bent the offending axle down so that it made the wheel touch the table.  So it was off to the church to get checked in again. 

 

 

Inspection of the tires.

 

Weight check.

 

 

 

A view of the track.

 

 

There were a lot of cars competing.  There were over 50 numbers on the cars, but there may have only been 40 or so cars there.  I am not sure why the counts were off.

 

The races were broken up into heats where the cars each raced 4-5 times. That is Andrew's car in the second from the right hand lane.

 

 

Ahead from the start!

 

 

Andrew ended up winning all of the races in his heat which qualified  him for the finals.  They had a cool electronic finish line.

Here is his car winning again.  Sorry for the blurry pictures. 

 

 

After the all of the semi final races it was down to Andrew and one other car.  They raced them both in the center of the track switching tracks and then on the outside, switching tracks.  Andrew's car won 3 of the 4 races.

 

 

Here is the finish line for the final race.  He won the whole derby!  It was very exciting to watch, especially the last few races.

All of the cars get awards and Andrew's got Classiest Convertible. 

 

 

Here they are announcing his first place win.

 

Andrew with his car.

 

He was so excited to win and it was even better because we went to my parents house afterwards and were able to share the victory with cousins!  Ryan and his family had just come in from Visalia so Andrew was able to tell the story of the win.  A big thanks to Grandpa for his derby car expertise!