Post by OPA RENNEN on Oct 12, 2011 12:39:20 GMT -7
42 years ago, my oldest son turned 8 and brought home a pinewood kit. The 1970’s kits consisted of wheels (nothing like todays), a narrower block (about 1.5”) with two cut-outs in the bottom (1/2” x 1/4”). Two additional pieces of wood (1/2 x 1 3/4 x 1/4 inches) were wooden axle holders with a slot similar to today’s BSA slot. The two pieces were then glued under the block in the slots, and the nails/wheels inserted into those two wooden axle holders. NONE of the cuttings were very exact. I had been racing sport cars for 10 years (‘57 Porsche Speedsters and Lotus Super-7's, now expensive classic cars), and knew the kit was flawed.
I threw away everything except the wheels, and recut the same items from dry pine blocks. The rules were loose back then, so I extended the wheel base and narrowed the main body to a square torpedo, after melting lead into the rear pocket I had created. I bought new nails slightly larger than the wheel bores, and sanded them down to a tighter tolerance. With a small lathe, I trued up the outer OD while thinned the wheels to 1/8 inch. While lathe cutting the wheels I discovered many air pockets, which indicated the wheels were out of balance.
Now for the balancing trick which you could still use today.
I inserted two double edge razor blades 1/2 inch apart, into a rubber eraser, cut off a nail to 1 inch, that was sanded down to a tighter fit to the wheel bore, set the wheel and nail between the razor blades, and watched the heavy side roll down. Those wheels were so out of balance, the question: how to balance them? I drilled eight 1/8 inch holes through the side of the wheel, making them look like a MAG wheel (which I told all who asked me “why the wheel holes?”). Back then, no one knew about balancing, nor that unsprung weight makes wheels accelerate faster (in auto racing, we used ultra-light mag rims, and lightened the flywheels (and other motor parts) for acceleration). I reasoned the same would be true with pinewood wheels. To bring the wheel into balance, I chose the hole on the heavy side, and made it slightly larger. Those wheels were so bad that it took 15 wheels to come up with six good ones. We needed six, because wooden tracks were so bad, cars would jump their lane, often breaking our more fragile wheels; hence, the extra spares.
With this routine, my 5 sons ruled the Pinewood world in that council for the next 15 years.
One day, we ran up against another car equal to ours. The father turned out to be an old German craftsman that I had met in Austria (as a young Mormon missionary). We carefully traded "secrets". He had also balanced his wheels by using a very tight oiled wire.
I threw away everything except the wheels, and recut the same items from dry pine blocks. The rules were loose back then, so I extended the wheel base and narrowed the main body to a square torpedo, after melting lead into the rear pocket I had created. I bought new nails slightly larger than the wheel bores, and sanded them down to a tighter tolerance. With a small lathe, I trued up the outer OD while thinned the wheels to 1/8 inch. While lathe cutting the wheels I discovered many air pockets, which indicated the wheels were out of balance.
Now for the balancing trick which you could still use today.
I inserted two double edge razor blades 1/2 inch apart, into a rubber eraser, cut off a nail to 1 inch, that was sanded down to a tighter fit to the wheel bore, set the wheel and nail between the razor blades, and watched the heavy side roll down. Those wheels were so out of balance, the question: how to balance them? I drilled eight 1/8 inch holes through the side of the wheel, making them look like a MAG wheel (which I told all who asked me “why the wheel holes?”). Back then, no one knew about balancing, nor that unsprung weight makes wheels accelerate faster (in auto racing, we used ultra-light mag rims, and lightened the flywheels (and other motor parts) for acceleration). I reasoned the same would be true with pinewood wheels. To bring the wheel into balance, I chose the hole on the heavy side, and made it slightly larger. Those wheels were so bad that it took 15 wheels to come up with six good ones. We needed six, because wooden tracks were so bad, cars would jump their lane, often breaking our more fragile wheels; hence, the extra spares.
With this routine, my 5 sons ruled the Pinewood world in that council for the next 15 years.
One day, we ran up against another car equal to ours. The father turned out to be an old German craftsman that I had met in Austria (as a young Mormon missionary). We carefully traded "secrets". He had also balanced his wheels by using a very tight oiled wire.
