tillius wrote:

Why would you want to weight the wheels of a Pinewood Derby car? Adding
weight at their periphery will increase the rotational inertial of the
wheels, and they will accelerate more SLOWLY than unweighted wheels. Just
the opposite of what you want. But I may be missing something...

Because the track we run on has a very long runout at the bottom of the
slope. I was thinking that the rotational inertia would cause the
wheel's RMP's to decay slower on the straight away. That, and moving
the weight from the body to the wheels would decrease the friction
between the wheel axels and the wheels.

I may be wrong, but since we've got another year to prepare, I was
thinking we could set up a small test track in the basement and try
different configurations. It would make a great science project for the
kids as well.

BTW, while I'm on the subject, is there a better lube than graphite
powder? We tried teflon and graphite this year and the graphite
definitely outperformed the teflon by a HUGE margin.

Tillman

You might want to try some of that "fixturing alloy" you can get from
MSC/Enco/McMaster. Since it melts at such a low temp you might be able
to directly cast it into the plastic wheels.

Pete C.