As a former Cub Scout pack Master I must advise you that modifying the
wheels other than truing the roundness is not legal. We added unlimited top
fuel and funny car classes for the dads that couldn't resist meddling to
much in their Cub's design. :-)

--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

"tillius" wrote in message
ups.com...
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