Saturday, March 10, 2007

The Nübercar

Last August you may remember that I posted a short article about a pinewood derby car I made called the Übercar. Well it's that time of year again, and so over the last week I helped my two cubs build their cars for this year's race. I also took the opportunity to build this:

Call it "Übercar 2", "Son of Übercar", "The New Übercar", or perhaps just "The Nübercar". Whatever you call it, I call it pretty darn fast. Last night I had the chance to test it out against the original Übercar at a race I ran for a cub scout pack in Issaquah. The Nübercar averaged 3 hundredths of a second faster than the original Übercar. I credit such new features as a slightly longer wheelbase, more carefully aligned and polished wheels and axles, and a spiffy purple paint job. Well OK, perhaps the paint job doesn't have much to do with it but it sure looks cool.

Here's a short video of the car in action. In the last two sequences (3 and 4), my oldest son's pinewood derby car is in the left lane as an example of a typical cub scout's first place car. The original Übercar is in the center lane and the Nübercar is on the right, winning by over half a length.

1 Comments:

At 11:15 AM, March 12, 2007, Blogger Phollower said...

I'm not sure if it's still there or not but we used to store the local cub scouts' pinewood derby track in the barn at my dad's house. The troop has been defunct for 20 years now but the track may still be up there. The reason I mention it is because it was way cooler than your track. You know those giant slides they have at state fairs and such? The kind that start with a steep drop followed by a leveling off followed by another drop and another leveling off etc? That's what our track was like. I'd love to have seen your cars on it. They may have caught some air.

 

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