This past weekend I decided to take off the "responsible parent" hat for a while and let my daughter have some fun, and I just had to share it..
It started with a donated "Barbie" Powerwheels Jeep. The battery was bad, and there was no charger. Now, being donated I wanted to make sure it was OK before I spent any money on it. My daughter has another Powerwheels Quad that she is getting a bit big for, so I figured I would try the 6V battery out of it and at least see if it works. Well, with the battery spliced in that darn thing ran. Cool, free Barbie Jeep! Now, being 6V the Jeep is greatly under-powered, and the neighbors bigger Powerwheels quad was much faster. What's a dad to do.. I went out to the shed and grabbed the 12V battery out of my lawn tractor, spliced it in. The jeep definitely ran well, and had decent power. I went to Lowes to try to find the smallest 12V Tractor battery I could fine, but unfortunately they were still too big, and the Jeep looked funny driving around with the hood open and a huge battery sticking out of it. (and it was still slower than the neighbors quad). Ok, what else can I do with the free Jeep.
It was an hour or two later when I had to fix a few screws on my deck with my cordless drill, My 18V DeWalt Cordless drill! Then it hit me.. Well, if 12V ran good, I wonder what 18V will do!? So, a few minutes later I had one of my 18V XRP batteries hooked into it (it fit under the hood too!l). I figured I'd get about 5 kick-a$$ minutes out of it before the battery gave up.
First of all, we beat the neighbors quad by about 5 car-lengths! VICTORY! Now, if I could only get my 11 second car to beat his low 8 second car I'd be really golden, but that is a story for another time.
What really surprised me is that the Jeep actually ran for about 20 minutes before the battery was dead. No normally we have to put the Jeep away and let the battery charge for 18 hours before she could use it again. Put the DeWalt battery on the charger and in about an hour we're good to go again!
After the first 20 minutes of driving the Jeep, we found some limitations. Mainly, it's a peg-leg. One wheel with all that torque is pretty useless, it's fun, but uselsss when you get off level ground.
Remember that 6V quad I mentioned earlier...
Well, the quad has a live axle, so I figured traction would be better. It was, in fact she has to lean forward over the bars or the damn thing will flip over!
Video here..
YouTube - Hot Rod Powerwheels
It started with a donated "Barbie" Powerwheels Jeep. The battery was bad, and there was no charger. Now, being donated I wanted to make sure it was OK before I spent any money on it. My daughter has another Powerwheels Quad that she is getting a bit big for, so I figured I would try the 6V battery out of it and at least see if it works. Well, with the battery spliced in that darn thing ran. Cool, free Barbie Jeep! Now, being 6V the Jeep is greatly under-powered, and the neighbors bigger Powerwheels quad was much faster. What's a dad to do.. I went out to the shed and grabbed the 12V battery out of my lawn tractor, spliced it in. The jeep definitely ran well, and had decent power. I went to Lowes to try to find the smallest 12V Tractor battery I could fine, but unfortunately they were still too big, and the Jeep looked funny driving around with the hood open and a huge battery sticking out of it. (and it was still slower than the neighbors quad). Ok, what else can I do with the free Jeep.
It was an hour or two later when I had to fix a few screws on my deck with my cordless drill, My 18V DeWalt Cordless drill! Then it hit me.. Well, if 12V ran good, I wonder what 18V will do!? So, a few minutes later I had one of my 18V XRP batteries hooked into it (it fit under the hood too!l). I figured I'd get about 5 kick-a$$ minutes out of it before the battery gave up.
First of all, we beat the neighbors quad by about 5 car-lengths! VICTORY! Now, if I could only get my 11 second car to beat his low 8 second car I'd be really golden, but that is a story for another time.
What really surprised me is that the Jeep actually ran for about 20 minutes before the battery was dead. No normally we have to put the Jeep away and let the battery charge for 18 hours before she could use it again. Put the DeWalt battery on the charger and in about an hour we're good to go again!
After the first 20 minutes of driving the Jeep, we found some limitations. Mainly, it's a peg-leg. One wheel with all that torque is pretty useless, it's fun, but uselsss when you get off level ground.
Remember that 6V quad I mentioned earlier...
Well, the quad has a live axle, so I figured traction would be better. It was, in fact she has to lean forward over the bars or the damn thing will flip over!
Video here..
YouTube - Hot Rod Powerwheels
