Golf and the Pinewood Derby

Nicegy525

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My son and I just competed in our first (of many years to come) Cub Scout Pinewood Derby.

We did very well for our first year, taking home 2nd place finishes both in my son's class and in the Dad/Outlaw class.

Im already brainstorming ideas for how to make next year even more fun and epic as this year was and something interesting popped into my head.

How Likely would it be to have a major golf company accept my challenge to build a pinewood derby car for next year's race?

Pinewood derby cars are all about maximizing weight placement with a limited amount of weight, aerodynamics play a role as well as steps to minimize friction. The cub scouts are limited to use the materials provided to them and the Dad's can use their imagination (think electric fan powered or CO2 powered)

Weight placement, MOI, aerodynamics are all a part of club design and I thought this could be a good way to engage today's youth with today's technology and design techniques.

Opinions? Does anyone with some weight in the golf community think this is a neat idea?
 
I loved my time making Pinewood Derby cars with my Dad.
 
I had great fun doing the Derby for years with my son.

It might be a fun novelty for a golf company to do it but I am not sure why any of them would be motivated to do it. No harm in trying to get me to do it but you might end up coming back to "just" having an experience with your son again next year.
 
I think it would have merit as a community outreach/publicity stunt
 
Do kids even build their cars anymore? I went to see my nephews race their cars and there's no way in heck a 10 yo built the cars that I saw. I remember making mine with a hacksaw and black spray paint.
 
It's not just for the boys anymore. My daughter's Girl Scouts did it this year. It was a lot of fun and we did surprisingly well for our first attempt at it.
Parents build the cars, the kids decorate them.

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We had our annual pinewood derby contest last Saturday.
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I built 4 cars, one for each of my family. We had some surprising results. I invested alot of time and energy into my car (the red one). A super light frame to concentrate weight in the sweet spot. Highly polished axles, bent to precise degrees and aligned perfectly. the lightened frame was concealed by 1/64" thick plywood. I fully expected this car to be the fastest by a long shot.

My oldest's car (silver) was expected to be the 2nd fastest as it too was cut and designed for optimum performance.

My youngest ones (blue) was cut out based on the shape he drew, painted the color he wanted and given just a basic set up of weight placement and axle polish. Only one axle was bent to provide alignment capabilities.

My wife's (blue/purple-ish) was made from the scraps of my youngest's block. It too was given a basic set up.

in order of fastest to slowest:

Blue
Red
Silver
Purple

The silver one was the only car to compete with the scouts. Among that group, no other scout even came close.

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Loved the Pinewood Derby.
 
Turbulators on a Pinewood Derby car? Why not?

Loved the Derby, and we did something similar in seventh grade wood shop, but the cars were bigger and were allowed to be heavier. I remember clamping the rough shape into my dad's vice so I could drill two large holes in the bottom with a brace and bit auger, then filled those holes with lead I had melted in a tin can over a gas stove in our basement (!!!?) As I was putting the bushings into the tires to slip over the axle, my dad said, "Here," and handed me a small tube of dry graphite lubricant. For a last little edge, I waxed the body and exposed axles. I won our class runoff, and beat the winners from the other two classes as well. One kid's dad was a master carpenter and his car was a thing of beauty. To this day, I credit the graphite lube, and I never let my dad forget that.
 
Golf and the Pinewood Derby

One year I made a Lamborghini Countach for the Derby. Looked fast, but wasn’t. ;). I had even extended the sides out far enough so that there were wheel wells.
 
Pinewood Derby, wow! Thanks for the memories. Humble brag - I'm a former Pinewood Derby champion from way back in the 1900's when i was a Cub Scout. Still have the car and trophy packed away together somewhere.
 
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