pinewood derby wheels

Pinewood Derby Wheels

Pinewood derby wheels are made with an injection molding procedure. During this process, the plastic can blister due to heat of the mold or moisture content in the plastic chips. Those blisters cause imperfections in the pinewood derby wheels. Imperfections increment friction.

In 2009 BSA produced a new wheel mold. With the improvements to previous designs, today'southward Pinewood Derby wheels require little training to exist race set when compared to previous molds.  Unfortunately, most of your competitors volition take the verbal same wheels that are as fast. After 12 years of production the molds are showing signs of wear. Thus, it is of import to inspect your wheels prior to racing. No wheel mold is safety from flaws. Having good wheels helps a lot to become y'all to the terminate line quicker.

  • Use this method to sort out of round pinewood derby wheels
  • Utilise this method to sort out flawed wheels

How to Make PWD wheels Faster

In one case you have sorted out your racing wheels, so it is time to prepare them for racing. Using proper PWD wheels tooling to set each function of the racing cycle will ensure that a bike will be consistently matched to its other iii wheels for the smooth quiet ride down the rail. Proper tooling is the central. Stay away from the life-hacks you see some people showing. A shaved piece of metallic with a bike on a mandrel while spinning on a drill printing is nowhere as safe or authentic as a wheel on a lathe or using the Pro Wheel Shaver .

Out of round pinewood derby wheels crusade improper alignment at speed. This is something that is greatly mis-understood. An assembled derby car can scroll perfect on a tuning lath, but different things happen at max speed on the rail. This is why we show all of our testing on a treadmill at 10MPH. Every bit an out of round wheel travels down the rail and gains speed the cycle will heighten and drop which volition cause the car to pull to 1 side or wobble dorsum and forth depending on how bad or how many wheels are out of round. In one case the death wobble starts, it never stops. If this happens to yous, I recommend starting over.

Irresolute the contour of your pinewood derby wheels hub can requite neat advantages to reducing friction. Changing the contour eliminates the amount of friction between the axle and the wheel. Thus, allowing for a change in static and kinetic friction forces. Contour modifications include coned outer hubs and reduced outer hubs. Both accomplish the same goal and could be regulated by pack rules.

Exercise Non Always skip pinewood wheel bore polishing

Finally, the last stride would exist to smooth the pinewood derby wheels inner bore and hub surfaces to ensure a most frictionless surface. There is no substitute for removing manufacturing flaws from the injection molding process. Every millisecond adds up. Any plastic polish volition piece of work. Y'all volition first demand a heavy dust to remove all the blisters, so you will demand a concluding polish to make the surface smooth. Farthermost racers will seal the bore with a wax or synthetic sealant so terminate with a graphite burnish to pre-load the wheels prior to tuning (if using graphite). Nosotros offer polishing supplies if they are non readily available locally.

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