Yay – the 2010 PWD for Pack 106 is over! It was a very busy few days for the all of us who helped out, and while it was fun, I’m glad it’s over until next year!

Jacob’s car won 2nd place overall for speed out of 60 or so cars! It was a very close match-up between his car and the winner’s, but the 1st place competitor was consistently a couple hundredths of a second ahead. My guess is that it came down to superior wheel alignment, which we’ll definitely have to pay more attention to next year. For what it’s worth, we spent most of our “tuning” time on polishing the axles and proper weight placement, but besides ensuring that the car itself went straight, we didn’t worry too much about perfect wheel alignment.

Rebecca’s car was even faster, which I think surprised everyone! She got 4th place in the “Siblings/Adult” race, and was racing against some previous years’ winners, so that’s a very good showing! Mine was an abysmal 10th place – all 3 of the kids beat me soundly!

Another father and I also ran some fun tests to see if “weight in the back” really makes a difference, and the results were interesting: Jacob’s car was consistently faster going forwards (weight in the back) instead of backwards. However, his friend Jake’s car was faster backwards, which we think might be due to a improperly aligned front-wheel causing excess friction against the track. A better experiment could be done easily by just building a simple car using movable weights. The car itself would have to weigh very little, and have the weights be very dense and properly balanced at extreme positions. Maybe next year, I’ll give this a shot for fun.

The debate on 3-wheeled v. 4-wheeled designs continues too! Other packs in the area require all 4 wheels to be on the track, whereas we allow (and even recommend) 3-wheeled cars. The winner this year ran with all 4 wheels, while our cars all used 3-wheel designs, so there might be something to be said for keeping all 4 wheels spinning all the time.

I’m also reconsidering the axle hole style we used: I re-drilled our axle slots using a Dremel-driven drill press instead of cutting new axle shafts. While holes are more stable, they definitely cut down on the amount of adjustment you can do once the wheels are in.

All-told, we had a great time, and are really looking forward to our designs in 2011!