Pinewood Derby Car project

Today was Edward's first the first Pinewood Derby Car Race as a Cub Scout. We did this project together and had a ton of fun doing it. Before starting the design of the car, we watched a ton of youtube videos (such as this and many more) and rad bunch of articles on how to build a fast car and it all seemed very simple (and fun). I can't wait next year race - our CubScout Pack decided to have dad's car race the night before kids :-). Before I go into details - here is the final car we've had - it took 1st place in design as voted by scouts. as far as speed - well, it could have done better - and I will tell you why as I know what we will do next year :-).


According to "sources" the proper way to build a fast Pinewood Derby Car is to do these few things:

In our car we have implemented #1, #3 (kinda), #4, #5, #6. We did not do #2 as it was against the rules to modify the wheels and we did not do #7 because the rules prevented changes to the wheel base, etc. We also decided to sacrifice some of the #3 (aerodynamics) for the esthetics - mainly because we felt our car will be so fast, we can afford some drag :-).

First we decided what overall design we are going to have and together drew the shape of the future car on the paper:

Then we transferred the outline to the wooden block and made rough cuts with the large saw and then some finer cuts with the manual coping saw.

Then we used belt sander to smooth out the rough cut and shape the top of the car. This all was done in a matter of a few minutes - very easy.

Once we had the outline done, we used the Dremel tool with the sand paper attachment to make finer shape adjustments. This is a bit more delicate work and requires more precision.

 Nevertheless, Edward did some of this as well (mostly the bottom part of the car). This Dremel tool can easily ruin your design if you overdo it, but we passed this phase with only few minor mistakes.

The last part of the body work was to make a hole for the driver and cut our the rear spoiler and glue it onto the body of the car. These things are not very aerodynamic and were done on purpose - we traded of some speed for the "looks". However this is not what kept us from winning the speed race. More about it later (some drama, eh?). we made a windshield out of plastic box from grapes.

 The biggest thing in the Pinewood Derby car is the weight placement. We decided to make an opening in the rear to conceal all the weight - drilled the opening and made it all the way to the driver seat to that the bolt that will go in can also adjust the center of gravity if needed. Plus we can add or remove bolts to add or remove weight - and all of it will be concealed inside.

 To melt lead I closed one end of the copper pipe, filled it with led (from bb gun pellets - $2.5 per 5 oz box) and heated it with a torch. Then poured it into the opening in the car. The car almost caught on flames - the lead was so hot! We also kept the garage door open and wore face mask to avoid exposure to the lead fumes. Also use protective glasses to avoid potential splashes from hot lead into eyes. This is a risky part of the project, but it worked out very well.

Once lead cooled down, we covered it with about 1/8" of the epoxy glue so nobody will touch the lead and we can sand and pain it. Then I drilled a hole all the way to the driver seat - this is where the bolt for weight and gravity center adjustment will go.

Our center of gravity was 3/4 of an inch in front of rear axle. This is good for smooth track, but may not be great for the track with small bumps as at high speed you can pop front wheels and go off the track. This is why having long hole as shown below is so useful - by using a screw driver I can move the bolt deeper into the car in a matter of seconds without changing the weight of the car, but this can shift my center of gravity in either direction.

BTW - the thread marks you see in the picture below are made by simply drilling the right hole first and then screwing the bolt into it - lead is very soft and bolt makes its own thread.

Once all structural work was done we primed the car twice - with sanding of the first layer.

 And finally painted it once with gold paint and then drew numbers and letters on the car. Next day we painted it once with polyurethane. Once it was all dry we used car wax for extra polish.

Now it is time to work on wheels. First we worked on polishing the nails. First - put it in the drill and apply file while spinning the nail. After that use sand paper to smooth it out and finally use polishing compound. Once you get the hang of it, it takes less then 10 minutes to polish a nail to mirror finish.

 Since we wanted to ride on canted wheels - we had to bend nails to about 2 degree angle. Instead of buying a $100 device to do it, I made my own device from a 2x4" stud. Just make two wide cuts with a regular saw - each cut perpendicular to another, then insert polished nail with its head into one of the slots - with the sharp side of the nail protruding outside of the block of wood by the lenght of the section that needs to be bent. Then tap with a hammer on that protruding part of the nail. Not very precise, but cheap and easy.

 The benefit of this approach of bending the nail - vs. holding it with pliers is that soft wood does not scratch polished surface of the nail. And you must bend it after you polish it - you can only polish straight nail. And once you bend it - if you scratch it - you better start with a new nail as polishing bent nail is nearly impossible.

 Finally - we polished the sides with graphite, added bunch of graphite into wheels and on nails.

We raised one front wheel so it was about 1/16" above the ground. Before we glued the wheels, we inserted nails and ran tests on the floor to make sure our car does understeering for about 2" over 4 feet - this is for rail riding. And this is where we made a big mistake! Later on when I did test runs on the track, I saw how this rail riding slows down the car. I do not think next year we are doing rail riding and will make straight rider. After all wheel alignments were done, we use epoxy glue to attach nails.

 I did not mention, but along every step above, we were constantly weighting the car - so that we would know how much lead to use, what is the impact of paint, nails, wheels and other things on the weight. The point was to build a car that would be 2 or 3 oz lighter than the regulation 5 oz weight and then cut small bolts into short segments (and cut the slot for screw driver). We had about 7 cuts of this bolt of different length (and weight) so we have a choice when getting as close to 5 oz as possible.

These bolt' segments serve 2 purposes. One is to add or remove weight (the race scale can be different from the one we used at home) and Two is to shift center of gravity towards the front or rear as needed - depending how front wheel behave (you do not want those front wheels to pop on a bump). This resulted in our center of gravity being 3/4" in front of the rear wheels. Very fast design.

The entire project took about 10 hours and was ton of fun. We did win the #1 place in design, but were in the middle overall on speed. After the race was over, I did several test runs on the track and it became VERY obvious that our rail riding was slowing the car down by A LOT. It was very easy to spot - I wish we had access to the track when we were doing the tests (before gluing nails to the body). This was a trivial error to avoid, but we did not know simply by not test riding on the track.

The biggest lesson of this is that if we want to win on speed, we need to do test rides on a track. Otherwise it is a gamble and only experimentation can complete the project. The funny thing is that all of the design and construction is 99% of the effort in the project while test riding and adjusting it on the track is 1% of the effort, but it is very critical to achieve high speed.

What will I do differently next year?

1. Next year I will avoid rail riding and adjust the wheels so that car rides straight line.
2. I will bend nails half the amount of what I did this year (probably about 1 degree)
3. While polishing nails, I will use sandpaper up to 1500 grit (see this article for details)
4. Pack the wheels densely with graphite and do not run the car after that.
5. Make shape totally aerodynamic for maximum speed (and make fancy shape on a separate car - for dad's race)
6. Possibly make three different cars with slightly different designs and have them compete in my garage to deserve the race?
7. Make my own short track out of wood and cut grooves with rotary tool - and test test test the car!

Here is the concept car design for the 2016 race - we plan on making a wind tunnel to test aerodynamics and short test track to make sure it rides fast.

Garage door spring replacement project

In September torsion springs on my garage door broke and I had a dilemma of hiring a contractor or fixing it myself. After having three different contractors bid between $400 to $900 for the project ($400 for basic replacement and $900 for complete overhaul of the door), I decided to do it myself.

In addition to replacing torsion springs, I decided to do a complete overhaul of my garage door system and replaced cables, bearing, springs and all 10 rollers with these high quality ones from Amazon:

 Having spent a couple of hours researching the process of replacing the torsion springs, I was very aware how DANGEROUS this process could be if not done properly. I was also having a really hard time finding appropriate torsion springs. This is when I found this AWESOME web site where I ordered two of my new springs, two new cables and new bearing for the torsion rod. This website has lots of instructional videos and very good customer service - I called them three times with questions and they quickly answered all of them! If you ever are going to replace your garage hardware - use this site: http://ddmgaragedoors.com/index.php. Here are instructional videos that they share freely with everyone - these are by far the best videos on the internet about replacing torsion springs: http://ddmgaragedoors.com/diy-instructions.


When you order your new springs, you need to make very careful measurements - the site above explains all of it. Here is what I measured on my setup - I sent a link to the DDM Garage Door folks and they made sure I ordered correct hardware:

This project took me about 10 hours total:

• 2 hours of researching the technical details and watching videos
• 1 hour to measure everything (twice)
• 2 hours shopping for the right parts (I wish I knew about DDM Garage Doors right away)
• 2 hours installing and adjusting springs
• 2 hours to install and adjust cables
• 1 hour to replace rollers
• 15 minutes to lubricate everything
• 10 min to write this blog.

I spent about $150 on parts - all highest quality you can possibly buy on the market. This means I saved about $750 compared to the $900 price for the door overhaul proposed by one of the contractors. This comes to about $75 per hour spent. The joy I had from doing it myself - priceless :-). The parts and work quality - I bet it is the same or likely higher than what I would get from a contractor.

The reason I wanted to write this blog is to share my outstanding experience with the DDM Garage Doors as the provider of parts and their excellent customer service.

The other big reason is to warn about the high danger of replacing torsion springs. This project is not for the faint of heart. It can kill you if not done right. However once you know the process and follow it, it is very safe to do and is not complicated at all. But you MUST DO IT CORRECTLY!!! Watch instruction videos and hire contractor if you are not sure you can do it right.

Sprint Triathlon in North Park, Pittsburgh (Janney and YMCA - 2014)

On August 10, 2014 I raced Sprint Triathlon in North Park. This is only few minutes from my home and back in 2011 this was my first ever triathlon race (photos here). In 2013 I took first place in my age group (race report), so in this race I was defending my title sort of speak.

This year I won again in my 40-44 age group (19 participants) and went faster than the all competitors from age group 0 to 44, except for the overall competitors. I was 9th overall out of 233 competitors. The official results can be found here: http://www.runhigh.com/2014RESULTS/R081014AC.html.

Here is the comparison of 2014 results to 2013 and 2011 races:

	2011	2013	2014
Swim (700 yards)	00:18:21	00:13:48	00:14:29
Bike (12.5 miles)	00:33:17	00:32:59	00:32:46
Run (3.1 miles)	00:23:04	00:21:42	00:22:01
Total	01:14:42	01:08:29	01:09:16

I am happy with the result, however swim and run are slower compared to 2013 - not really sure why is that so. I sure hope this is because conditions were different and not because I got slower :-).

As always - major thing that needs improvement is the control of pre-race anxiety. I could not get any sleep the night before the race. I may have slept for about 30 minutes total - same as last year...

Two weeks in Russia and a week in Japan

Just came back from the 3 weeks trip to Russia and Japan. This was a business trip, but I got to see my relatives on weekends. Fall is a great time to visit Moscow! Beautiful colors in the forest with plenty of mushroom hunting, fresh apples from the garden, crisp air, and great food - any time of the year :-).

On the way from the airport we drove by the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI) - my Alma Mater. With relatives we went into the forest for mushroom hunting - took few photos while doing that and mom cooked delicious mushroom soup that night. The work week in Moscow was packed with customer meetings and I did not have much time to take pictures.

After Moscow, I flew to Tokyo on a direct flight, which was delayed 7 hours because of the Typhoon in Japan. When I landed any trace of bad weather was gone. In Tokyo I stayed at a nice Royal Park Hotel and went to fitness club for a run, swim and sauna every day :-). In sauna I was reprimanded by the maintenance man for going into it in my swim trunks. My Pittsburgh YMCA folks would disagree, but this was not Pittsburgh, so I took all clothes off next time and fit in well :-). There was not much free time in Tokyo, so unlike my earlier visits this time I have very few pics to offer:

Paragliding lesson

Yesterday I took a lesson in paragliding. Having never done sky diving or anything at all related to flying (except for too many commercial airplanes), this was such a fun experience! I have to say that watching youtube videos of paragliding pros I thought this was a relatively easy thing to do. However as it frequently turns out it is easier said than done properly :-) Here are few moments from the 2.5 hour lesson yesterday (I had better launches than these, but they were not filmed). In the end I had a towed launch, but I put it at the start of the video as it "looks" the coolest :-)

If you want to take a lesson, I highly recommend Jon at http://www.pittsburghparagliding.com. I got this lesson for half the cost thanks to the Amazon Local coupon I got by email.

Camping with Cub Scouts in Boy Scouts' Heritage Reservation

This weekend my youngest son Edward and I were at Camp Independence with his Cub Scout Pack 36 for 4 days. This is annual event and is open for all Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts.What an awesome time we had!!! Wow.

The weather was perfect - no rain, not too hot, not too cold. Forest and lake are beautiful. Facilities are great. Staff is outstanding - very energetic and super friendly. Program was packed with all kinds of cool things. The only thing that was a bit lacking is the food, but for 4 days it was ok. Kids had every hour scheduled, starting at 7:50 flag ceremony, followed by breakfast at 8, then activities until 6 pm dinner, which included geology (tour of the mine and rock search), nature trail, sports, BB shooting, bow shooting, crafts, swimming, kayaking, boating, fishing, service project, castle wet sponge fighting, rock throwing, knife skills, tennis, basketball, camp fire, etc. In our pack everyone enjoyed all of the activities. This was so much fun and kids were very happy. After dinner there was a show at camp fire and some free time. Bed time started at 10 pm. Some adults with pedometers found out that we walked about 6 to 7 miles every day. I managed to run 7.5 miles only once (on second day).

I took bunch of pictures and videos while at the camp (click to see the full album):

Rain water collection system - rainbarrels, etc. (part 1)

In the past week I have setup a system to collect rain water from the roof of my house (located in Pittsburgh, PA). The water to be used for irrigation of the lawn and garden. I have wanted to do it for quite some time now, but now that my pipe under the driveway collapsed, I decided to build it, instead of digging the driveway, which was freshly covered with new asphalt just this past October.

The cost of the system is around $300. the biggest investment was my own time. I spent estimated 20 hours to build this thing, but now I feel quite happy as the system works very well.

I have taken pictures and provided captions for every picture should you decide to build a system like this. The project is only half finished at this time as I have water being collected in plastic totes, but I need to finish the decoration so that these same totes are not exposed to sun and do not look as ugly as they do. I will probably build something out of wood to make it look pretty. Here is a quick snapshot of the entire project - click on the image to see detailed comments for each picture:

The only thing I still need to figure out is the fine filtration. Since I use small electric motor to pump the water to a higher ground of my front lawn, the fine filter on a sprinkler gets clogged every hour or so, so I have to take out the house from that sprinkler and clean it. I need to build a filtering system so that pumped water is clean. Have not decided on how to to id yet.

It appears my calculations for capacity are not correct as some rains provide more water than the total capacity of my system and water overflows via this little blue house I have for the overflow. It is not bad, just sorry to lose that water. Perhaps in the future will add one or two additional 275 gallon water tanks to expand the capacity.

Hiking in Shenandoah National Park

This past weekend my son and I went hiking with boyscouts to the Shenandoah National Park. Everything was just perfect - company, weather, camp, mountains, river. Here is a photo story of the trip (if you want to see all 131 photos, then go here):

Trip to Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia

The next day after the Pittsburgh Marathon I had to fly to Asia for two weeks for work. I was still very sore after the race and had to get up "almost" every hour on the plane and stretch, walk, etc. Good thing I was sitting in the isle seat. I can imagine what would it be if I had to seat in the middle :-0.

My first stop was Malaysia and it took me over 26 hours to get there, including 3 flights (Pittsburgh -> NY -> Hong Kong -> Kuala Lumpur). Just about 22 hours flying time. Not a good thing after the marathon if you ask me. And this was not business class either.  The hotel in Malaysia was excellent - with nice 20 meter swimming pool and fitness center, so I got to swim every day and did some biking and towards the end of the week even running (up to 3 miles at a time). since this was my second time in Malaysia and I was so sore I did not do any touristic things (although I had great tour my first time around). The breakfast at hotel was simply awesome! Just take a look at these pictures :-). Fresh papaya, fresh squeezed juices, and more. Yum... Although I have spent there entire week, I simply worked in hotel room or in office or met with clients. Not much outside of work or food :-).

My second stop was Singapore. What a lovely city! Very clean and nice looking. It has amazing history - breaking up from Malaysia with no natural resources and prospering to the highest degree. The city is very expensive to live in, especially considering that to drive a car there you would pay almost two or three times of the cost of the car itself for the right to drive it. Such is the cost of a small space. The other thing I learned is that Singapore is buying soil, brings it on barges and dumps it into the sea to reclaim some space. They have expanded its size by 20% and plan to expand it by another 90 sq km. Wow... This was my fourth time here, but I have not been able to explore the city much and I had one free day (Tuesday was their public holiday) and I went to see the Botanical garden. Boy - was it something! I was told that estimated cost to build it was over $1B - and I think it is worth every penny. Beautiful place. Check out these photos I took - all with my Android Samsung Galaxy S3 phone (there are 103 pictures - click to see the full album):

My third stop was Thailand. This was my second time in Thailand and because of the government protests going on I decided not to do any tourism. However my first trip was very lovely from a touristic perspective when I took lots of pictures. This time I only had my Samsung phone with me a took a handful of photos. Compare the tw:

Photos from the first trip:

And photos from this trip :-)

Pittsburgh marathon 2014 race report

For several years I wanted to run Pittsburgh marathon, but other priorities took precedence until now. Finally this past Sunday May 4th I finished the race. This was my second full distance marathon and it was just as much fun as the first one I did in September 2011 (Erie Marathon at Presque Isle). Here is the result from the official site:

This was certainly my "A" race for the year as I wanted to improve my previous result, which I did. The Erie Marathon is very flat with only about 300ft of elevation gain, while Pittsburgh Marathon has 4343 ft of elevation gain and loss (for a grand total of net 0 elevation gain) according to my Garmin GPS. Nevertheless, after 2.5 years of training I improved my result by 3 min, 33 sec - not a bad result considering more difficult terrain. Here is the GPS track with pace and heart rate data from the GPS (click to go to the interactive map):

Race packet pickup was very well organized. I came in about 1 hour before they closed the place and had no lines. Took me only 15 min to get my stuff. I did not do any special carb loading the day before the race. Ate normal - some green veggies, chicken, bread, berry shake, etc.

Training

Just like I did the last time, I have used Hal Higdon "Marathon Training - Novice 2" plan (I used Novice 1 in 2011). Since 29 of December 2013 when the marathon training started, I did run training 4 times a week, cross training about 4 times a week, swimming twice a week, and biking 4 to 5 times a week. Here is the color coded schedule - feel free to click on the image and download into your own XLS document so you can update it for your own training schedule:

I was lucky to not be sick for the entire period from Dec 30 up until the marathon and have not skipped any workouts. I was planning to run 3h:15m, but I assume that will take few things:

• Upgrading the training miles to the "Intermediate 1 or 2" plan (per Hal Higdon)
• Sticking with the 3:15 pace group from the beginning
• Learning how to sleep the night before the race
• Learning how to overcome the "pain" while running. I went into this race half wanting to run fast and half wanting to just enjoy the race. I would say I mostly enjoyed it and did not push as hard as I could. May be it is a good thing?

Race day

I slept 9 hours two days before the race because I knew I would have trouble getting sleep the night before, which I did. That is I did not get any sleep the night before the race. Even a tablet of melatonin did not help. I just laid in bed with my eyes shut, but had no sleep at all. This was very annoying. I felt my heart rate increase for no reason - just overall anxiety before the race. If I only could get a solid sleep, I could have been so much more rested... I wonder what is the secret to this sleep thing? I never have trouble sleeping.

In any case, I got up at 4:15 am, checked weather forecast (for the 10th time), ate whole wheat slice of bread with almond butter and jelly, hot green tea, banana. Used bathroom for #2 and #1 three or four times. Woke up my wife and youngest son and we left the house at 5:30am. It turns out 30,000 people racing can create a traffic jam even at 6am. By the time we parked on the parking lot north of the Allegheny River (on the ball park parking lot) it was already 6:30. Instead of 30 min, it took 1 hour to get there. One more trip to the bathroom with waiting in line took another 10 minutes. We had to walk very fast across the river to the A starting corral. While on the bridge I only had 15 minutes left before the start, so I jogged to the corral A. Lucky it was still open. I ran in place for 10 min to warm up before the start and got my heart rate to about 130. I decided to pace myself using my GPS and that was a mistake. I should have joined the pace group wight from the start. While walking from the car to the start it was pretty cold and I wore old clothing - old pants and old sweater. I took it off 5 minutes before the start and put it next to the garbage can in the start corral. In hindsight, this was a great thing to do, but I should not have worn long sleeve shirt under my PTC tri race kit as it got warm enough and those long sleeves did not help. But again, the temperature being about 55 was just perfect for the race.

Despite the great number of people at the start line, it was not very hard to run in this crowd. Before the gun went off I saw two PTCers - Ed and Chris. I am glad I wore PTC kit as seeing "brothers in arms" was a nice bonus before the start! Even first mile was pretty good as everyone moved at the same brisk pace of about 7 to 7:30 min per mile and my expectation of being squished between hundreds of runners turned out to be false. After first couple of miles runners stretched even more (more so with every mile) and it became easier to find the best path to run. Even so, next time I will be more careful choosing my path as making wide turns really adds up during the marathon (read this good article). My GPS showed that I ran 0.3 miles more than a marathon distance. That is a couple of extra minutes on the clock that I should not have spent.

I sipped Gatorade about every 2 to 3 miles - about 1/4 of a cup at a time. That will make it approximately 3 full cups over the full distance. I think it was enough liquid as the temperature was about 50 degrees (perfect for running!). I also took my Powerbar Gels every 45 minutes - for a total of 4 gels (all 4 were different flavors). I think I could do away with 3 gels next time? The reason is that consuming a gel slows breathing and slows you down. Plus I don't think I needed all that extra energy anyway.

I noticed that on hills I maintained the effort and was quickly passing people, while on downhills I also maintained the effort, but some people were passing me. Perhaps it is all the North Park trail running?

At mile 14 I was caught by the 3:20 pace group and stuck with them all the way until the end of the race. This took constant GPS watching off my plate and I could simply concentrate on running. However if not for this pace group, I am not really sure I would have been able to maintain the pace that I needed on my own. First half went by very easily with no significant effort, but second half started to be progressively harder. Over the distance of the race I walked twice for 20 seconds each time. First time I fully caught back the 3:20 pace group and have not lost any time at all, but on second walk I got behind pace group by about 15 seconds and have not fully caught them.

As last several miles got progressively harder, it was a great relief to hit the downhill at about mile 23. I passed pace group by about a minute thinking I could run a couple of minutes under 3:20, but one mile before finish they caught me again. Last two mile were pretty hard and I felt something that looked like a beginning signs of cramps on the right side and decided not to push the pace for the fear of locking up, not to mention that it was pretty hard. I swear that if they made finish Gate visible from mile 24, I would have run a LOT faster, but the way they laid it out - you do not see the finish gate until about 100 yards away from it after you make a right turn into Point State Park. This has got to be a consideration! Make the frigging finish shute visible, damn it! :-).

I must say that spectators and scenery on the course was pretty awesome. I felt like the city belongs to runners this day (and it did). There were lots of funny signs, but I stopped paying attention to those after the first half as I had to concentrate on my pace.

The best part was that I knew my wife and son are waiting for me at the finish line. I kept their images in my head for the last few miles when times were tough - and it helped. Would have been harder if they were at home and I had nobody waiting at the finish line.

 At home for recovery I made myself a smoothie on my Vitamix with frozen mangos, chia seeds, carrot, bananas, yogurt, honey, frozen berries, avocado. Drank 3 cups that day and another 2 cups the next morning before leaving for the airport.

Once I got home from the race, it was *very* painful to talk those stairs for two days... I don't think I had that after my first marathon. To make matters worse, the next morning after the race I boarded a plane and flew 1.5h to NY, then 15.5h to Hong Kong and another 3.5h to Kuala Lumpur. Did not get to walk much and had to sit on that plane for almost 24 hours. Not a good thing for recovery. No more DOMs after 4 days. But here in KL before and after having business meetings I got to swim in hotel pool, biked and today (Saturday) ran for the first time after the race. In fact today I did 45 min cross training in the morning and in the afternoon swam 2000 meters, biked 18 miles and ran 3 miles - more than a spring triathlon :-).

Future

Have not decided yet when to run the next full marathon. Perhaps next year? Or may be not. One of the ideas is to pace someone for the 4 hours run. That would be like a slow long run - training run. Really not sure what comes next.