PINEWOOD DERBY DISQUALIFICATION

[gcnphkr]

Ah, nothing gets people POed like the PWD.

JoeBob--Unless they've recently change the rules in the box, there is no rule #7. The rule you quote is some group's rule, not from the box. Rule #7 from the Cub Scout Leader How Too Book is "The car shall not ride on any kind of spring."

ghermanno--Make all the local rules you want, but don't confuse them with nation or official rules. Anyone racing needs to conform with the local rules, whatever they are and however silly they may be. But don't think that those rules will apply in another unit, district or council.

From the box:

 

Wheel bearings, washers, and bushings are prohibited. The car shall not ride on springs. Only official Cub Scout Grand Prix Pinewood Derby wheels and axles are permitted. Only dry lubricant is permitted. Details, such as steering wheel and driver are permissible as long as these details do not exceed the maximum length, width and weight specifications. The car must be free-wheeling, with no starting devices. Each car must pass inspection by the official inspection committee before it may compete. If, at registration, a car does not pass inspection, the owner will be informed of the reason for failure, and will be given time within the official weigh-in time period to make the adjustment. After final approval, cars will not be re-inspected unless the car is damaged in handling or in a race.

I believe the only change in those rules for over 30 years in the requirement for dry lube. Notice that PACK15NISSAN breaks the specifically stated rule: After final approval, cars will not be re-inspected unless the car is damaged in handling or in a race. It also appears that the cub was not given an opportunity to correct the error but was summarily disqualified. The scout followed the rules as stated in the box, he did not follow the rules the pack had in place. The inspectors had an opportunity to note the error during the initial inspection. It was an obvious thing which anyone looking at the car should have noticed. The scout could have made the correction at that time. Once it passed inspection the car was legal and it should not have been DQed.

[fleetfootedfox]

jet526, I have never heard of boys running their own pinewood derby. Your comments make me question if you have ever been involved in running one. As with other volunteer jobs, it is a lot of work and you don't get paid. So, we shouldn't be too hard on the people if their implementation is not everything we want it to be.

 

PACK15NISSAN, people can complain about your enforcing the rules, but they are not your rules. So, all you have to ask yourself is did you follow the rules? Unfortunately, you did not, because they say, "After final approval, cars will not be re-inspected unless the car is damaged in handling or in a race."

 

The inspection committee clearly messed up, so maybe some change in the inspection process should be implemented. Having more than one person involved in the inspection might be a good solution. The official rules mentions the "inspection committee", which would imply more than one person.

 

That said, if you thought at the time you were doing the right thing, you should not feel guilty about it. The hardest part of being a leader is having to make tough decisions.

[PACK15NISSAN]

I have stated multiple times that we are using our own Pack Rules. We do use some of the guidelines that come in the box, but not all of them. Therefore I nor any other leader broke any rules by DQ'ing the boy after he passed inspection or not giving him a chance to fix the problem. The only reason I fell bad is because the father made the mistake not his son. The boy probably had no clue and thought it was great that he was racing with his dads wheels.

 

Again, I admit that we should have caught it but a rule is a rule. So I guess the lesson that some of you wish to teach the boys is that it is okay to break a rule as long as you don't get caught, or at least if you don't get caught in the first hour. No wonder there are so many problems with the youth of this country look at the leaders we have teaching them.

 

Thanks to all of you who provided real feedback both positive and negitive. To those who just want to critisize I will give you my cell phone number and you can feel free to call me up and we will talk about how much better your Pack is.

 

Email me at Ethan@simsengineers.com with you problems regarding my pack and I will email you back with my cell #.

[scoutldr]

Back in the day when I was a CM, we had the pre-race inspection, weigh-in and "pit repairs" the night before (Friday). Check in between 6pm and 8pm. Do all the mods and weighing you want, but when you hand it over the FINAL time, it went on the table and was never touched (or inspected) again until race time. More often than not, a car they thought was "spot on" weight, yielded a different result on the "official" scale (all cars weighed on the same scale).

 

Then on Sat morning, RACE and have fun!

[gcnphkr]

Scouter760, I didn't say they have to or even should run the derby. But I can't imagine letting someone else put my car on the track. At the last PWD I was responsible for the scouts got their car from the pit and placed it on the track. Yes, it took longer but we still managed without any cars being dropped. Scouts tend to be very careful of cars they worked on. We had the old track set up outside where they did challenge matches after they had finished in their age group, no adults, no disputes but lots of fun.

 

Adults tend to add rules that are not needed and make it much more competitive than it should be. One reason why I prefer the Rain Gutter Regatta, at least the cubs still get to be active participants instead of bystanders.

[gcnphkr]

I apologize for being overly harsh. You hit some pet peeves and I reacted instead of responded.

 

So I guess the lesson that some of you wish to teach the boys is that it is okay to break a rule as long as you don't get caught, or at least if you don't get caught in the first hour.

You stated, "The boy probably had no clue" and that the parent said "that he didn't know they weren't supposed to be used". There was no intentional breaking of the rules here. If it had been caught on initial inspection is there any doubt that the scout would have corrected the problem by replacing the wheels? Not really. So who failed here? The inspectors did. Who got punished? The scout. So is this the lesson you are wanting to teach: Honest mistakes are punished if you are weak but allowed if you are in power? I doubt it, but that is exactly what you did.

You started off by asking "Did we over react? Should we have done something different? Considered something we didn't?" You might want to consider the purpose of the PWD. It is not about a lot of rules or the competition. It is about the scouts having fun and bonding with their parents (usually dad). Here is a father that shared with his son the wheels from his PWD car of 30 years ago. A car that he has likely been keeping in a shoebox waiting for this day. Here is a father and son that are actually participating in the PWD the way that it is intended. But because the rules are more important than the purpose you disqualified the scout.

[DeanRx]

This is why I'm SOOOOOO glad our council has a championship PWD at the Scout Fair following the regular spring PWD season. They have been running it for a very long time and have a set standard of rules.

 

We cut and paste it for our pack PWD. Bottom line, if you win the unit PWD, then you get to race at the council event. If you are out of specs at council they will DQ your car, so we want to send forward a valid entry, thus we use their rules.

 

I had to explain this to more than one new Tiger parent this year b/c they didn't understnad. Once informed, they were fine with it.

 

WE also run an unlimited class for parents / siblings / anyone else that builds a car.

 

We had ONE scout car show up at the PWD this year with machined wheels (they were thinned to about 1/3 the normal width, so easy to tell). We gave the cub and parent an option...

 

1) Use a standard set of wheels (we have extra on hand) and they could have some extra time to change the wheels out on the car, then re-check it in.

 

OR

 

2) The cub can run in the unlimited class, but will not be in the running for pack champion.

 

We put the ball in the family's court and they decided to run unlimited without changing out the wheels. No hard feeling and I bet they pay bettter attention to the rule sheet next year.

 

We also make sure and have enough time at the end for "grudge" races. In those, the boys get to run the track themselves if they want to... but the cars on, reset the timers, run the start gate, etc...

 

The best was a four lane race this year between a cub's car, his sisters car, the cub's car from last year, and his dad's car from 20 years ago.... they ran a very tight heat! It was fun for the family and fun for everyone else to watch.

[captainron14]

Man! It is too bad that the "PW Derby" (for many)has turned into the Cub version of Little League!

The version where, the race is more for the adults than the boys. All too often you look at the cars and you can tell which ones the boys had some part of the construction, and the ones that Dad did.

The excuse that they give is I did it for "him". They should try doing it WITH him rather for him. That's what it all about.

Back when I was a CM at our PWD, a good meaning parent brought a couple of "extra" cars (ones that were made/used by her sons in years previous). Her reasoning was for those boys who forgot their car or did not have one made. She gave these cars out at the beginning with no one knowing about it.

Well, this was brought to my attention after someone recognized one of the cars (it had gone all the way to Council a few years before). I DQd the cars and had them race after the competition. Boy did some parents come unglued. They got caught up in the heat of moment. The parent who brought the cars was upset for all the uproar. We almost did not have a PWD the following year because of all the fuss.

I have seen this happen many times over the years. That is why you have the intense attention to detail with rules (like the original Pack in question).

It is sad. Yes it should be for and about the boys, but there are always the parents who are reliving their childhood through their kid. They sometimes spoil it for the rest.

[tonys]

Dad's (and Mom's) will always want juinor to do well and winning is fun. when I was in the Pack with my sons we worked together to build the car my boys wanted funny looking nice paint pokeman ect. my boys and I always talked about what we could do to make the car faster (our secret weapon as it were) usually did not win. we did win a couple of times. I personally wanted the boys to have fun! and by the end of cubs I had a lot of fun trying to build what my son's imagined. Our pack had all the usual rules, but the cubmaster had awards for slowest (biggest trophy) and most unusual car (became a favorite competition)

any way if I went off topic I'm sorry. you were there you decided with the best interest of the boys at heart let the decision stand. don't second guess yourself.

YIS

[RWA]

I have run our packs pinewood for four years and assisted with the district derby for three, chairman this past year. If you or your representative at check in passed the car, then the car was passed, plain and simple. You should have let it race. Yes, a rule is a rule, but why bother to inspect the cars before the race if something as obvious as old style wheels was missed. You punished a boy for your mistake.

You could have given them the opportunity to change the wheels to legal wheels, then run a tie breaker round. We always have extras on hand, in case of a crashed or dropped car, This is one way you could have made up for your mistake and still allowed them to finish the race.

If I understand correctly, this car had already run eight races, and no one caught thirty year old front wheels? They are the narrow ones if I'm not mistaken. Pretty hard to miss. I would disqualify your inspectors.

[Lisabob]

This is a problem with ladder style race set-ups. Even if you had changed out the wheels late in the race, at that point other boys' cars have lost out on a chance to continue to race (outside their dens). No matter what remedy you apply late in the race to deal with having discovered that there was an impropriety, the fact remains that you CANNOT correct it for those boys whose cars did not advance because they lost to this particular car. This is why many packs run races where all cars run the same # of races (changing lanes and perhaps also changing racing opponents), and the car with the fastest average time wins the race. Had you been running such a set-up, you could have DQ'd the car without causing havoc lower down in the standings. There still might have been upset people since it wasn't discovered til the last race of the day, of course, but at least the impact on other cars' chances in the race would have been ameliorated.

 

As it is, I think you count yourself lucky that the dad (or the parents of the other kids whose cars didn't get to advance because they lost to that kid) didn't make a bigger fuss. No matter what you did at that point, the last race of the day, you would have been in for it. Learn from it and move on, and consider doing things a bit differently next year.

 

(This message has been edited by lisabob)

[PACK15NISSAN]

For what it is worth we only discussed the DQ option with the Pit Officials (leaders) and no one except the parent/child involved was informed. We usually give back the papers that we keep track of score on but didn't this year so we keep things under wraps. We did our best to fix the mistake and to let everyone know about. To all the other boys and parents present, they just assumed that car didn't win.

[PACK15NISSAN]

For what it is worth we only discussed the DQ option with the Pit Officials (leaders) and no one except the parent/child involved was informed. We usually give back the papers that we keep track of score on but didn't this year so we keep things under wraps. We did our best to fix the mistake and to let everyone know about. To all the other boys and parents present, they just assumed that car didn't win.

[rjscout]

Pack15nissan, I think you did the right thing. I am amazed how adamant some scouters get with their opinion of what is right. The Pinewood Derby can get heated, but hopefully not. We had some issues in my first year of running the race where folks were mad that they made the racers out of the Pine Car kits, and not the BSA kits that were given out 7 weeks prior. We told them that they could race, but would not qualify for trophies and District races. I think we lost a few of those into the next year, but we also retained a few. We know that we stated the BSA kit rule several times, but they weren't paying attention. We stated the rule even more after that.

 

I love the Pinewood Derby... for the excitement of working on the car with my son, and seeing the excitement of the boys at check-in and as the race gets started. I got my start as a Cub Leader by volunteering to HELP (how did I become the CM so quickly after that signup?).

 

We hope to have some open races for the enthusiastic parents and siblings so that the boys will be able to spend more time on the car, or even learn the building techiques by watching the work being done by Mom or Dad on their own car. We might have an old track setup for the boys to do some of their own racing while the open race is going on. The boys may, or may not, like to watch the open race.

 

Best of luck to everyone for having a fun and successful race.

[gpraceman2]

I am definitely in the camp with those that believe that once a car passes inspection, it should not then be later disqualified for something that should have been caught at inspection. That would be punishing the cub for the inspector's mistake. Instead, you make a note of that problem and address it for next year's race.