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This isn't a set of instructions. The kit comes with a manual, and the manual is the boss, and
the rules can change from year to year, so read your own. This is just what we did, in the order
we did it, and what we'd tell ourselves if we could go back to March. Same as the front page:
Dad in black, Nicole in pink.
Tools we used the most: a socket set, a set of combination wrenches, a 25-foot steel tape,
a square, a level, masking tape, a fine-point marker, a shop light, a stool the right height for
an eleven-year-old, and a spiral notebook that ended up being the most important tool in the
garage.
Also snacks. Write that down. -- N.
STEP 1
Sat., March 6 |
Read the whole manual. Together.
The boxes came the last week of February and sat in the dining room for a week while we read. We
read it out loud at the kitchen table, a chapter a night, and Nicole wrote down every word she
didn't know. Then on the first Saturday we opened everything on a tarp in the garage and checked
every part against the parts list. Every bag of hardware got a masking-tape label with what it was
and which step it went with. That's an electrician's habit. You label everything, because the
person who has to figure it out later is usually you.
Words I didn't know: kingpin, ballast, cotter pin, toe-in. I know them all now. |
STEP 2
Sat., March 13 |
The floorboard.
Everything bolts to the floorboard, so everything depends on it. We set it on two sawhorses
and leveled the sawhorses first, then checked the board for flat in every direction. The manual
says where every hole goes and what goes in it. Our rule: we didn't drill a single hole the manual
didn't ask for, and we measured every one three times before Nicole drilled it.
I drilled all of them. Dad held the board and made a face every time. |
STEP 3
Sat., March 20 |
The axles.
Rear axle first, then the front, following the manual. This is where we started the notebook.
Every measurement went in it with the date: from the end of each axle to the back of the
floorboard, left and right, and across from corner to corner. If the two sides don't match, the
axles aren't square, and a car with axles that aren't square wants to turn. Nicole tightened every
bolt. I checked them after, and only once found one that needed another quarter turn.
ONE. Out of all of them. |
STEP 4
Sat., March 27 |
The steering.
The steering wheel turns a shaft, and cables run from it to the front axle, which pivots. The
cables have to be set so that when the wheel is straight, the front axle is straight, and so the
tension is even on both sides. If one side is tighter, the car pulls. This took a whole Saturday,
two weeknights and some language I'm not putting on the Internet. It's a lot like pulling wire: it isn't hard, it's
just fussy, and you can't rush it. Before we finished, Nicole sat in the car to make sure the wheel
didn't hit her knees when she turned it. It did. We fixed that.
Dad said "language" but it was only "for crying out loud." Like eight times. |
STEP 5
Sat., April 10 |
The brake.
(We skipped Easter weekend.) The driver pushes a pedal with her foot and it presses a pad down
against the road. That's it, and it matters more than anything else on the car, because it's the
part that keeps your kid safe at the bottom of the hill. We put it in exactly per the manual, then
tested it in the driveway at walking speed, with me pushing the car and Nicole stopping it, maybe
forty times, until she could stop it smoothly without thinking.
The neighbors watched. One of them clapped. |
STEP 6
Sat., April 17 and 24 |
Alignment, again.
With the steering and brake on, we checked everything from Step 3 all over again, because putting
parts on can move parts you already put on. We also rolled the car slowly down our driveway, which
has a gentle slope, with nobody in it and a rope on the back so it couldn't get away, and watched
whether it drifted. It did, a little, to the left. Back to the notebook. On April 24 the numbers
finally matched on both sides and Nicole made me write the date on the garage wall with the
marker, where it still is. |
STEP 7
May 1 to May 15 |
The body and the paint.
Fit the body pieces, take them off, sand, primer, sand, paint, wait, paint, wait. The paint is
all Nicole's: purple, with a pink stripe she laid out with masking tape and a yardstick, and a
white 14 on the nose and tail. Our sponsor's name went on both sides with the decals they gave us.
The rules about numbers and decals are specific, so check yours before you paint over the spot
where they go. We did not, the first time.
The purple is called Grape. I picked it from the little cards at the hardware store.
It took me an hour. Dad sat on a paint can the whole time. |
STEP 8
Sat., May 22 |
Ballast and the weigh-in at home.
There's a top weight for car and driver together. First we weighed Nicole in her helmet and race
clothes, then the car, and figured how much ballast we could add and stay under. Then we placed it
where the rules allow and bolted it down tight, because nothing in a derby car is allowed to move.
We borrowed a good scale from a friend, since the bathroom scale and the derby's scale were never
going to agree, and we left ourselves a little room under the limit.
Don't eat a big breakfast on weigh-in day. Kidding. Sort of. |
STEP 9
Sat., May 29 |
Fitting the driver.
Nicole sat in the car in the garage for an hour on Memorial Day weekend with her helmet on, getting
her position right: as low as she could get, head down, eyes just over the front edge so she can
see the lane and the finish line and nothing else. We set a mirror on a chair so she could see what
she looked like from the front. Then she practiced climbing in and out fast, because at the top of
the hill you don't want to be the one holding everybody up.
Dad said I looked like a turtle. He says that's good. Turtles are fast in a derby car, I guess. |
STEP 10
Sat., June 5 |
Practice day on the real hill.
The first time the car went down a real hill, with Nicole in it, I couldn't watch and couldn't not
watch. She got four runs. The first one she was all over the wheel; by the fourth she was barely
touching it. This should have been four practice days, not one. See "What We'd Do Differently"
on the front page.
The first run I forgot to breathe. Then I remembered. It's SO quiet in there.
You can hear the wheels and the wind and that's all. |
STEP 11
Sat., June 12 |
Last checks.
Every bolt, every cotter pin, the cable tension, the brake, the ballast, the notebook numbers one
more time. Then we cleaned it, covered it with an old bedsheet and left it alone for a week. The
hardest part of the whole build. |
RACE DAY
Sat., June 19 |
Second place out of fourteen.
The whole day, heat by heat, is on the front page. |
By the numbers
| Saturdays in the garage | 13 |
| Hours, roughly | 61 |
| Hours Nicole did the work | 61 |
| Hours Dad kept his hands in his pockets | 58 |
| Pages in the alignment notebook | 34 |
| Times Nicole said "Dad. Rules." | 9 |
It was more than nine. -- N.
If you're building your first car and you get stuck, write to us at
[email protected]. We're no experts. We're one year
ahead of you, which is sometimes better.
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