Motorized Pinewood Derby Car 2012
I woke up the day of the Pinewood Derby race and decided that I wanted to run a car in the “outlaw” class. Using spare parts I had lying around I made a remote controlled Pinewood Derby car in about five hours.
The car would have done really well (especially since the CO2 car malfunctioned on both official runs) except for a couple of issues. On the first run the rubber band on the driver’s side wheel came off and wrapped around the axle, jamming it. On the second run the limits of the cheep transmitter/receiver became grossly apparent as I had to chase the car down the track to keep it going.
In case your wondering (and why wouldn’t you be?) the axle, motor, gears and belt came from an old printer. The wheels were cut from a piece of acrylic, and the transmitter/receiver parts were “borrowed” from a dollar store RC car.
The drive motor was powered by a 9v NiMH battery. Since the RC receiver runs on 4.5v I used a relay to turn the motor on via the RC receiver. Electrical and Duct Tape held everything together.
Here is a video of the first run:
And the second run:
And finally here is a close up video of the motor running:
