BSA stopped doing space derby. I'm wondering if anyone is a savant 3D modeler and able to send me files for the plastic parts from the old Derby so I can 3d print it all

From maybe 10 years ago now. It certainly wasn't fast, but it was fun to make.

Straight running, 3.5oz home-melted lead wad, whittled body, axles and hubs polished with auto cutting compound. Last pinewood derby was 42 years ago, wish me luck.

This game began with a standard downhill gravity race which took into account aerodynamics and weight placement. One key difference from Pinewood is in Foxel you can scale wheels which plays a role in performance. If you've played this mode in the past, I did do an update to the ending by clarifying the finish line and adding big numbers above cars to clarify winners

A big new feature for Pinewood Derby racers is an automated driver race. This race takes place on a circuit style track all cars drive by the same automated behavior. How your car handles though is up to your design. Does your car drive right into the rails? you may not have good weight over the front wheels for turning traction

Terrain mode gives the player control over gas, break and FWD/RWD. In this mode you challenge yourself for time and optimize your car to drive jumps and intense incline/ declines

My favorite mode is puzzle mode where you have to design your car to clear specifically designed challenges. Think building a hook into the roof of your car to slide along rails. Warning, this mode is advanced engineer level complicated.

Lastly, Want to look at hundreds of cars players have made? Check out Foxel Town. A public site where all the cars drive around in an endless parade

Again, totally free, play in browser, if you think it's cool, join the discord and follow along for updates

Foxel

My last name is Hatch—that’s why it says “ATCH” after the big H.

Very loose rules. it just had to fit on the track and have wheels.

I've been poking around the Pinewood Derby corners of the internet to see what others are doing, and I’m curious if I’m missing any cool ideas.

I know the "gold standard" is the Lane Rotation method (running 4/8/12 races per racer on a 4-lane track so every car hits every lane - depending on your lane count), but I run a church program where we’ve leaned into a more "Formula 1" style approach. We have about 30 kids and 10–15 adults, so we split into two groups and run the following:

• Free Practice: We run two sessions so people can adjust and tune their cars.
• Parc Fermé: Once practice ends, we institute Parc Fermé, no more touching the cars.
• Qualifying: Every car runs two timed rounds to get a ranking.
• The "Slowest Race" Bracket: We cut the last few cars from the main event and run a bracket just for them. I cannot stress enough, if you don't do this, you have to! We had the biggest cheer of the night when a slow car stopped directly on the finish line. (Note: Our rule is the car must finish to be considered).
  • We do this cut to make the brackets work cleaner, try to cut to a factor of the bracket.
• The Main Event: A single-elimination bracket with wildcards.
  • If we have 30 kids and cut 6 for the slowest race, the first round starts with 24.
  • We trim to 16 → 8 → 4 for the finals.
  • We use serpentine seeding to ensure top seeds face the slower qualifiers early on.
  • And the same for adults but its usually 12->8->4. The cut adults don't go to the slowest because...we're adults and losing is ok.
• The Finals: We run the final four cars exactly 4 times, one start in each lane, to ensure total fairness.

We've found that the exciment is much higher than a Lane Rotation setup. You can see the brackets developing and moving forward. Winning the races actually matters and we still the right winner the majority of the time.

What is everyone else doing? Do you use a standard rotation, or have you added any "house rules" or unique segments to your race days to keep the energy up?

I'd love to hear some cool ideas!

We made the final which exceeded our expectations! Never planned on winning, but want too next year! Great turnout to support a great charity and local coffee shop.

1st place pack, district, and council. Car on the left was our pack car, but District and Council races didn't allow air shields or teflon tape so my son and built another car for it.

Our rules don't allow lightened or lathed wheels besides light out of round corrections and light sanding and polishing. Hubs can be worked with hand tools. Axles must be from the box and cannot be machined, but can be polished.

We used a Turbo Derby XL Jig to drill the axle holes. 4.75 inch wheelbase. Wheels were lightly shaved round using a hand tool wheel shaver, but remained larger than 1.18" diameter. Inside and outside hubs were coned using a hand shaver, then everything was polished and axle bores were sealed, and then burnished with graphite. We applied super glue to the axle hole area on the body then sanded, polished, and burnished with graphite. Car steered 4 inches over 4 ft. 17 grams on the front wheel.

The district/council car was just a little bit wobbly on the track, so we need to tune a little better next time. Fun experience for son and I. Our council has an 8-lane 50+ foot track, so I think the fenders made the difference as the car won by 0.011 seconds. I think I need to get into adult racing lol.

My son is obsessed with Five Nights at Freddy’s. What do ya’ll think of our Pizzeria car?

Had a painting issue when applying clearcoat on the Porsche, caused black to run so tried to save it, the finish didn't turn out as nice, but could have been worse.

So my daughter is joining as a lion this upcoming year and she’s very excited about th pinewood derby (she just saw her brother participate and win a trophy). But I was talking to her about ideas and she wants a unicorn. She loves the monster truck Sparkle Smash and I would love to help her make something similar for her first car. Have you guys seen anything like it?

one of the rules was you have to use the wooden wheels in the kit.

Just had a let down of an experience and trying to help my kid understand it. Our troop runs each car in four heats so that each car has a run on each lane. Winning the heat has no bearing on anything, but rather the average time of all four runs is what decides the winners. We had a situation where we placed first twice and second once but still didn't get in the top three.

As a not child I understand what's happening with the math and "being fair" but for me, in a race, winners of each heat move on. This averaging approach gave a bunch of false hope to the people who weren't going to win, but also wound up with scouts who placed dead last but placed high in their den because all the cars were jumbled up rather than den exclusive heats.

Ugh I can handle teaching losing but to lose because of averages which is not something you understand mathematically yet is killing the mood yall.

edit: yall I know how measuring by time works I was just trying to figure out if this was a common approach or not since its wildly different from how we ran them decades ago when I was in scouts and I was caught off guard prepping my kid for the experience because it is not intuitive

Rules:

-track is 1 5/8 inches wide. must fit in that width.

-can be any material

-no engines. can only move via gravity power.

-must have wheels

-have fun

So far my best idea is to get one of those old school metal toy cars and fill it with weights. my sister is building hers out of a potato. my bil is 3d printing his. What would you do?

I'm looking to use DerbyNet this year, and a question came up knowing we have a late scout coming in later in the day. Since we average times on 4 heats (4 lane track), could the late scout run heats with another den, and just have his times transferred to the correct den? In other words, I need the racer's time to be with his Den, not necessarily the heat group he's in.

A hardware question: The reset button on my track looks like the button fell off. Is there a replacement i can order?

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