How To Make a Fast Pinewood Derby Car: The Most Important and Worthwhile Tips

Our son and I have made Pinewood Derby cars that have won our Pack’s Scout and parent races each year. In this video, we share with Cub Scouts and parents how we did it. Our follow-up video ( • Build a Winning Pinewo... ) takes you through a step-by-step example.
A great number of tips and advice can be found on the Internet for making a fast Pinewood Derby car. This video shows the tips that we found to make the biggest difference and were the most worthwhile for the amount of effort.
See our follow-up video ( • Build a Winning Pinewo... ) for a step-by-step example of how to put all of these tips together to make an actual car that can win your Pack’s race.
Video Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:27 How do you want to win?
01:07 Learning the secrets
02:14 Balance point in rear
04:07 Aerodynamic shape
04:39 Perfect axle gap
05:12 Lots of graphite
05:44 Move location of wheels
06:32 Lift one wheel
07:18 Roll straight
08:37 Polish axles
09:27 Other tips
09:41 Wrap-up

[@larsonmk1]

Thank you for making such an awesome video! No annoying background music, no long, drawn out intro. Clear and to the point!

[@EngWorkshop]

Thank you for the kind words. I don't like rambling videos either!

[@pitchfo248]

I'm posting this two years after this video was made. I wanted to leave a bread crumb for anyone who is doing their research for the big race. The tips in this video are very good for building a fast car. All things being equal (i.e., you don't have any superstar cars in your Pack) you will have a top car with these tips, and it won't take you a year to build as they are fairly easy to implement. Good luck!

[@EngWorkshop]

Thank you for the kind comment. As mentioned in the video's description, we made a second video showing a step-by-step example of how to implement these tips.

[@jeremybrunan9890]

Well done video! I like the NASA engineer video too. Interested to see the different views from rail riding to straight. You didn’t mention anything about negative camber on the rear wheels for less tread friction. Do you do canted axles in the rear?

[@EngWorkshop]

Thank you for your comments. Canted wheels and rail riding seem to be commonly mentioned techniques, but we haven't tried them. I feel they are less important than the other points in our video. Both techniques seem to add one type of friction in order to reduce another type, so it's difficult for me to judge the net gain. And based on our results, they aren't necessary for winning our Pack's race (at least for now!).

[@JanyGoRound]

Hello my friend. Nice to see your clip.

[@simplykiwified1606]

underated

[@LcLc99]

Great video. Make more please. 😊

[@EngWorkshop]

Thanks for the kind words. I'm working on a follow-up video showing step-by-step how to make a car that implements all of the tips from the first video.

[@IlianaInfurchia-bf7gv]

☺

[@thelogos8319]

The science of how to make the fastest pinewood derby car.

[@monkeysinthekitchen1457]

First even though I’m like 7 months late

[@EngWorkshop]

Congratulations!

[@Navneetkaur-cb7wt]

Mark rober engineer