Cool bit for Phillips screws

[Puckdropper]

Leon wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Does anyone make Phillips/Square combo drivers? I'm tired of Phillips slipping and square almost working.

Puckdropper

[Markem]

Mcfeely's makes combination screws, with square drive and phillips as options for driving the screw. That might be a place to look for a bit.

Mark

[Leon]

Yes, the deck screw company. It looked like an over sized Phillips head, blunt on the tip.

And now Bosch makes this.

[DerbyDad03]

lly-race-schedule.aspx

It's amazing what some people will do to help their driver's win. The worst part was making the kid an active participant in the illegal activity. The magnet scandal cost the national Derby organization a number of corporate sponsors and caused a number of local city organizations to suspend racing for quite a few years.

People still cheat today, but the "standardization" of the kits and savvy r ace directors make it a lot tougher.

One favorite trick used to involve the wheels. Each heat of a Derby race co nsists of 2 phases. The overall time differential determines the winner of the heat. Drivers swap lanes after each phase, which takes the lane differe nces out of the equation. The wheels are also swapped between phases so tha t the wheels are taken out of the equation.

One trick was to bring a really bad wheel to the race and then set up your car to essentially "ignore" that wheel, almost riding on 3 wheels. Then whe n you swap all 4 wheels to the competitors car, they are impacted by the cr appy wheel since their car was set up to use all 4. The theory is that even though you are impacted slightly by not really using that 4th wheel when i t is on your car, your opponent is impacted even more because of the drag i ntroduced by the bad wheel.

Race directors have come up with various wheel swap configurations that pre vent the cheaters from knowing which spindle they should "mal-adjust" to co mpensate for a bad wheel, so that trick has been all but eliminated.

There are other cheating methods, but it's getting much better. Just like e very other sport or competition, there will always be cheaters. When we rac ed, we pushed the rules to the very limit, but we never cheated. We worked with a team of 3 other families and we all have rules that are nicknamed af ter us because we pushed the existing rules just far enough that the inspec tors had to allow what we did the first time they saw it. The things we tri ed weren't illegal, we just interpreted the rules differently based on the way they were worded. The next racing season we'd find that a rule was adde d or modified to eliminate the "grey area" that we often played in. In some cases what we did became part of the plans, in other cases it was specific ally dis-allowed. Those were some fun times.

[John McCoy]

DerbyDad03 wrote in news: [e-mail]:

That is the challenge of any racing series, whether it's Soap Box Derby or Formula One - how to you come up with rules that allow some measure of creativity, but still preserve fairness and punish those who take it too far (i.e. cheat).

It is a shame that the Derby organizers felt the only way they could handle it was to take the creativity out of it. As you say, the skills to make mechanical innovations are becoming rarer, most of the creativity in today's youth is in software.

John

[krw]

Because people are stubborn. Note that many Phillips screws have slots, as well.

[krw]

I see a lot more Torx screws in my car than square head. That's where I first encountered them (and needed to buy screwdrivers).

[krw]

I remember them from the '70s. It had to be before '75 because we had a '74 Rustang. The door striker was essentially a Torx-head bolt.

[Puckdropper]

Leon wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Interesting. Anyone used them yet, or do I have to be the guinea pig?

I've got a couple boxes of those Kreg combo head shiny screws, so plenty of junk heads to test the bit on.

Puckdropper

[DerbyDad03]

If they came up with combination bit for this driver, I'd really be interested. I'm tired of constantly swapping the bits.

[Leon]

I think the biggest reason for only having slotted and Phillips drivers is simply because 98% of most people don't dwell on their screws and drivers. Basically they have them to fit stuff around the house. They do not build, or repair manufactured products. If they worked with screws as often as we do they would probably switch in a heart beat.

[Leon]

Yeah I don't think any vehicles ever had square head screws. I only recall going from the various Phillips style screws directly to the Torx.

[Leon]

74? Wasn't that the Pintang? ;~) Funny how Ford and GM started upper end vehicles based on their entry level vehicles. Pinto/Mustang II...... Vega/Monza/Starfire/Skylark, IIRC.

That is entirely possible/likely. IIRC GM adopted the Torx in 1975. Seat belt bolts were also some heavy duty applications of the Torx screw. And for what that is worth, they may have been around earlier than 1975 for GM however not for replacing the Phillips style screw. the big deal back then was the better screw to replace the applications that used Phillips screws.

[krw]

That's the one. Little POS. ;-)

Not sure I understand you point, "started upper end vehicles"?

I thought the original reason for the Torx head was robotic insertion. It was easier for the tool to hold the fastener.

[Leon]

More expensive vehicles based on the entry level. I had both a Chevy Vega and an Olds Starfire. The Starfire looked different from the Vega and had one hell of a more reliable V6 engine but looked different in many respects, but handles, knobs, steering wheel positions, pillars, pedals were all exactly in the same place.

That could be true, either way the Torx was/are better and easier to use than the Phillips head screws regardless of the user, robot or man.

[John McCoy]

Leon wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Early 70's is when GM really started "platform" engineering, building many models which only differed in small ways on the same basic car. It reached it's peak in the following generation, when the same platform was used for everything from the Chevy Cavalier to the Cadillac Cimarron.

Apropos of engines, some of the Vega derived models had either

305 or 350 small-blocks wedged in them, somehow. In that era I think it was a rule at GM that everything got a small-block V8 engine.

John

[Leon]

Few within the same brand were similar almost all had a cousin between divisions.

It was a 262cid small block with 110 hp. Although California had different engines. Some of the spark plugs had to be replaced through a cut out opening in the wheel well.

[Lew Hodgett]

---------------------------------------------------------------- The age of true junk.

Took a bankruptcy to clean things up at GM.

FoMoCo brought in somebody from the outside.

There was no hope for Chrysler.

Lew

[krw]

Except that the Rustang II wasn't expensive at all. It was rightfully known as a Pinto in drag. There wasn't much of a cost premium for the lace.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Knife, fork, woman's screwdriver. Neat.