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With regards to a drive string, as long as you could position your egg transport vehicle so that the string remained taut, you really didn't need a hook. I had a rod as my body, and all I did was just make a notch at the back end of the rod to place a loop made from the string. If you need a pic, ask.

If you keep your string taut, it acts like a spring and moves the vehicle out of place so that the string is no longer taut. To avoid this, do you just put a trip wire in front of your vehicle or something?

I had a piece of paper in front of the dowel that would just barley hold it and let the vehicle push past when released.

tanuagg13 wrote:If you keep your string taut, it acts like a spring and moves the vehicle out of place so that the string is no longer taut. To avoid this, do you just put a trip wire in front of your vehicle or something?

Never had a need to put anything in front of my vehicle to keep it in place. I'll just upload a pic when I get a chance

iwonder wrote:I had a piece of paper in front of the dowel that would just barley hold it and let the vehicle push past when released.

That's something I may use. I had a few problems with that in practice.

Yeah, I just folded it a few times to make it stiff enough, and that was that. I went to state with a really nice carbon fiber vehicle, 3d printed shaft, spring launcher and all that fancy stuff. And a folded up (nearly wadded) piece of graph paper taped to the front of it with some masking tape that was dirty and torn.

maybe that's just me being picky...

iwonder wrote:Yeah, I just folded it a few times to make it stiff enough, and that was that. I went to state with a really nice carbon fiber vehicle, 3d printed shaft, spring launcher and all that fancy stuff. And a folded up (nearly wadded) piece of graph paper taped to the front of it with some masking tape that was dirty and torn.

maybe that's just me being picky...

Hmm spring launcher? I was going to try that. I'm considering using a rubber band (I'm debating between officer rubber bands and helicopter rubber), basically "slingshot" the car out of the launcher.

Any tips on brakes, or are those trade secrets?

In addition to a threaded rod and wingnut? And using springs/rubber washers?

Honestly, now that I think about it, depending on the new rules, we might not necessarily even want to try to make the car move at high speeds.

Hmm, you might be right about not wanting to move at high speeds. But what's the point of scrambler if the egg can't be scrambled? Besides, the spring launcher is an experiment and can easily be downgraded.

Some spring launchers are incredibly fast. As the scrambler wiki page says, I thought wingnuts are inadequate for braking purposes for these launchers.

Not necessarily. You could use a spring and place it between the wing nut and whatever the nut makes contact with. This would help make the braking process more gradual.