PB 308 new page 14-18.indd - Plymouth Club

Pine ine Wood ood
(Plymouth Wood)
Derby erby – The Sequel
by Lee Lape
Papillion, Nebraska
When I last wrote, I mentioned that I was going to
build another Pinewood
Derby car with my grandson
David (we have six grandkids; five boys
and one girl). I was thinking of trying
to make this one look like my ‘41
Plymouth coupe. The family brought
the kit over a few weeks ago, but at
that time, a date hadn’t been set for the
race, so there was no hurry. I took a
pencil and kind of drew a pattern for the
coupe on the block of wood, and set it aside,
When the Scout pack set the date, David and I planned on
making a trip to the shop the next Saturday and cut the pattern
out on the band saw. He came over on the appointed day,
and I asked him if he had anything particular in mind for the
design of the car. He said, “Can we make it like my daddy’s
car?” (a 1965 Barracuda). I said that was an excellent idea, and
handed him a pencil and told him to erase my lines.
I pulled out my copy of the Plymouth DeSoto Story and
a couple of pictures of David’s dad Wesley’s Barracuda, and we
traced out a new pattern. We jumped in the car and drove over
to the shop and cut out the block. We then went to the
Hobby Lobby store, where we found a turquoise paint in the
model car section that was almost the same color as his dad’s
car.
While in the model section, we discovered a whole
Pinewood Derby section, with accessories and even blocks
already pre-cut in different patterns. In addition to selling
weights that could be added to a car, they sold an aluminum
chassis which weighs 2.5 ounces and looks like a car frame
with dual exhaust, the bottom of the engine, radiator, drive
shaft and rear end. There are sections of the “chassis” you can
The “chassis”
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Dad Wes es Lape’s Lape’ s ‘65 Barracuda
break off to get to get the correct weight of
5 ounces. So we picked up one of those, as
well.
David and I went through the same steps
that Logan and I did to complete Logan’s
car. He (we) sanded, varnished, painted and
“polished” the axles (nails). And we added
chrome windows and bumpers. When we
were done, I attached the wheels and we
applied liberal amounts of graphite. We set
the car on the scale and it weighed in at 3.7
ounces. We broke off the extra weight pieces from the “chassis,”
screwed them to the bottom, set the car on the scale, and
it was right at 5 ounces. I cut the top out of a tissue box and
added some foam padding, and we placed the car in it until
race day.
The big race was on Saturday,
April 9th. Unfortunately, that was the
day of our POC club meeting, so I was
unable to attend. We were meeting with
the local WPC chapter, and members of
the Heart of America Region to tour
Harold and Leona Soukup’s Toyland
Museum in North Bend. I helped set up
the meeting place for lunch in Fremont,
Nebraska, and felt I should attend, but I hated missing the
race.
The first cell phone call came right after we ordered lunch.
David’s mother said the car had been checked in and it passed
the initial inspection. Wes had driven his Barracuda to the
pack meeting, and everyone was impressed with his car, and
how well David’s Pinewood Derby replica turned out. The
second call came while I was standing in the parking lot waiting
for the others to finish lunch before touring to North