The Wheeler Family

and this is how it went down…

Michael and I have been working on this car for a LONG time… ok, maybe not, just since Saturday, and today is Wednesday, so just a little bit over the past 5 days. Saturday and Sunday we spent some time over at Rusty’s house since he has a garage with a nice workbench. It really helped to put the block in a vise to hold it while using power tools!

I didn’t take any pictures of the process, but I’ll have to for next year. Basically what we did was a flat car. I drilled 5 holes horizontally to put in some lead weights. I cut 3 lead bars in half with a Dremel, and used 5 of them. Then we filled the holes with putty so all of the weight was concealed. Michael spray painted the car yellow, and then with a black marker drew some tigerhawks and wrote the word “Iowa” on the sides. He loves those Hawkeyes.

I got a postal scale at Walmart for $20. It really helped a lot because we were able to figure out what we needed for weight. We came in at 5.0 oz, which was the limit. It really made the weigh-in process stress-free. We were the first ones there, put the car on the official scale, and it was perfectly at the limit. The next kid weighed in at 5.6 oz, so they had to take weight off. For him it was easy because they had a screw-on lead plate, and they could snap some of the weight off. Others though didn’t have that option so they had to frantically try to hollow out the bottom with a drill to bring it down. I wouldn’t want to have to do that.

Michael holding the car before the weigh-in

After the weigh-in

All of the cars

The Batmobile and Mystery Machine, turned in by Michael’s friends Jacob and Sam

Michael’s heat #1, in the close lane, finished 2nd.

I do not have a picture or video for Michael’s heat #2. I’m not sure what happened. He finished 2nd in the heat.

Heat #3, run #1, in the far lane, would have been first but a car derailed so they had to rerun it

Heat #3, run #2, far lane again, finished 1st in this heat

Heat #4, middle lane, finished 2nd

Heat #5, run #1. Michael was in the close lane. They had to run this heat 3 times because of problems. This first one, Michael’s car was first to finish, but it was so far ahead of the other car, it hit the pillow, bounced back, and stopped the car in the middle lane.

Heat #5, run #2. Michael was in the close lane. They had to run this heat 3 times because of problems. This second one, Michael’s car was first to finish, but the 2nd place car hit the pillow, bounced back, and stopped the car in the middle lane.

Heat #5, run #3. Michael was in the close lane. They had to run this heat 3 times because of problems. This was the third one. Michael was first again, and again a car bounced back and hit the other, but they went with this one.

Heat #6, middle lane, finished 2nd.

Michael won the “award” for Best Iowa Spirit or something, I can’t remember for sure.

Michael ended up finishing 4th, out of 17 kids. These were the official times. What they did was take the total for the six races, and add them up. Michael’s total for six heats was 13.9257 seconds. 1st thru 3rd got trophies. If you can read the picture, the kid in 3rd place had a time of 13.8999 seconds, for a difference of 0.0258 seconds overall, or an average of 0.0043 seconds per heat. Since this is our first experience with Pinewood Derby, I’m not sure how close that is exactly, but to me that seems razor thin!Overall I think we had a pretty good experience. Next year I’m going to have Michael do a little more of the work. Since this was our first time I wasn’t sure what he could and could not handle, but I think he’ll be able to do more in the future. I guess I feel like I did more of the work than I was planning on, but not enough that I feel like I cheated him out of the experience or anything.

Also, I know we’re not going to wait so long to start for next year. In fact, I think we’ll be starting in a few weeks. That will give us almost a whole year to get it done without rushing. Since we were running so close with time this year I feel like we missed out on some things that really would have helped Michael’s car do better, like doing a better job of polishing the axles, or sanding the car even smoother to cut down on friction. Our axles were bent and I didn’t even try to straighten them, and I thought about trying to align the wheels but just didn’t have the time. I know if we would have had time to do that we would have done even better.

Also, I better say thanks to Rusty for letting us use your garage. We really appreciate it. Also, thanks to my dad, for letting us borrow the Dremel. We’re done with this years Derby, but I still need the Dremel to fix a few of our chairs. But don’t worry, I’ll get it back to you!

Finally, a special thank you to Kate, for allowing us to take over the kitchen table for the past few days, and not getting too mad when I spent money on stuff for a wooden car.