I haven't been visiting this site in a long time. When we moved to Austin, Tx we moved into an apartment. Of course that meant no garage, tools had to go into storage and depression. I didn't want to think about the loss of my garage. (Cue tragic music.) Not that I'm a great mechanic, I just like having a place of my own. I have recently taken up building model cars again as a safety valve. Anyway the point of this is to ask if anyone knows of a Pinewood Derby or even a Soapbox Derby type race for adults and teens in central Texas. I am looking for something to lure my boys away from video games.
I know when my boys were in cub scouts the pinewood derby was pretty much an adult sport. Ill tell if those kids built those cars by themselves I'm George Washington!
I was asked to help judge a pinewood derby car show and I can safely say that most were built by adults. Gary
As Chevy Gasser mentioned above, the closest thing I know of are the valve cover races. Those usually happen at major car shows, like Goodguys events.
I've made more as a father than i ever have as a child. We participated in a church sponsored derby while we were in Guam. The adults don't even try to hide it. LOL! They were even betting on it... at church! It shouldn't have been a surprise. They have municipal sponsored cock fights.
You can get on www.scouting.org to find a cub scout pack in your area, right now is the pinewood derby time of the year.
One of the car clubs I belonged to used to put on their own "pine wood derby". It was a great Feb car club activity. We used 2 sets of 20' long rain gutter for a track, cardboard starting gate, and a 2 person judged finish line. We had 3 classes, plus a show class. We called it the "No Car, Car Show". Classes were: 1) Scouts pinewood rules, complete with the size box and scales. 2) Over weight Scout pinewood rules. (pinewood cars a bit too heavy, some were way too heavy). 3) Outlaw class. These models had to have wood on them someplace, (most had a piece of wood taped to the roof) and they had to fit on the track. Beyond that anything goes (one year we had a rocket powered car). We also had a show only class, which was anything that didn't fit into the classes, didn't fit on the track, or were just for fun, everything that was entered was included in the show section. We did 1st, 2nd & 3rd place trophies in each class. Cost $5 per entry, proceeds offset the expenses and anything left went towards club funds. We often had more then 30 car entries, it was great fun for 5 or 6 years. Gene
Our pack had a dad's race after the Cubs finished up. It was a fund raiser, $10 entry fee. I had built myself a killer car, but it got knocked out in the final round. Someone built a 2-lane test track and had it set up at their house, same specs as the real deal 4-lane track. Wonder what happened to that.
For any of you guys building these cars, the hot lick is get as much weight on the rear wheels as possible and the front as light as possible so when they "steer by Braille " the lateral drag is reduced.....
We do an adult version of "coaster" (downhill derby) cars during our annual Route 66 festival each year. These are go kart size. But, it's an outside event and it requires driving skills. I did the pinewood derby races as a cub scout dad. I hope you can get something going. It could be a great mall event for a fundraiser. R/C cars would be a good option for you also while you are in apartment mode.
https://www.sema.org/sema-cares/pinewood This is an awesome event that I have been able to be apart of since the first one. We get dozens of manufactures building pinewood derby cars and race them against each other. We have a few guys who even wind tunnel test cars and strap rockets to them (in the unlimited classes).
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