The POWERWHEELS MARIO KART PROJECT
WE DO HALLOWEEN BETTER
I picked up a Power Wheels Dune Racer from a guy on Craigslist for $40. The ad stated it was broken. This is perfect for me. I can fix damn near anything. I drove over to his place, paid him only $20, and loaded that sonofabitch into the back of the Grand Cherokee. It was pretty banged up - dirty, scratched, stickers were peeling off - a real disaster in other words. If I could get it working though... nothing a little spray paint and some dope ass vinyl decals couldn't fix.
STAGE 0 UPGRADES
I didn't get much in the way of photos of this thing prior to going to town on it. It was green, like this one. Step one was getting it working. Lucky me, this was a piece of cake. Apparently by 'broken,' dude meant to say 'I don't know how to replace a battery.' That's literally all it was, and exactly what I had a feeling it would be. Those stupid power wheels batteries are ungodly expensive - and for no reason at all. I pulled the battery out, attached gator clips to the leads and ran them to a 12V motorcycle battery. I pressed the accelerator switch and the wheels started whirring. Ok cool - the motors are good, just needs a battery.
Where I worked at the time, we had countless batteries that would roll through in various stages of remaining life. Because we can't determine how much longer several of them will last, we opt to recycle them. I instead decided to 'recycle' about 6 of them to my garage. At which point, I Dremeled out the rear of the kart to fit the new cell (they were shaped differently than the Power Wheels batteries).
To make it look cooler, I first decided to (gulp) plasti-dip the parts. Read my Datsun post if you wonder why I hesitate there. I fucking hate that stuff. Which is why you can clearly infer that there is a second step to this project. I intended on building a bat-mobile, so I did. And when it was done it looked neat and everything but I felt dirty having voluntarily used plasti-dip on something I own, and on purpose. This obviously was short lived because of my insecurities, and within a couple weeks I peeled it all off and made a promise to myself I'd jump off a bridge if I ever even considered doing that again.
STAGE 3 UPGRADES
I learned a lesson from a Ford mechanic when I owned that Probe. "Make it run good before you make it look good" he told a broke-ass me with a car that had a slipped timing belt. I heeded that advice with this kart. I'd make it go fast before I made it look cool. I went to MLToys - a website I stumbled across while browsing Reddit's PowerWheelsMods page. They sell everything to make your kids' perfectly safe electric kart perfectly unsafe. I won't tell you how much I spent there, but I will tell you I bought 2 new motors, heatsinks, spacers, wiring harnesses, replacement plastic gearboxes, and eventually metal sprocketed gearboxes, and several other parts. That place is awesome - who'd have thought of building a small business around Power Wheels mods??
Once everything arrived I got to work installing the new motors and reinforcing the chassis of the kart. It took some time... and patience... and trial and error but eventually I got it. During this process, I also got the Dremel back out and installed a 2nd battery cell under the 'hood' in the front of the kart. Since everything was taken apart already, it was a perfect opportunity to add more power, and also some weight to the front of the car.
I rewired the batteries to sacrifice runtime, but gain insane amounts of instant power to the wheels. This presented a problem because I wasn't trying to build a drift kart, but turns out that's exactly what I did. This stupid thing had so much torque the deafening plastic wheels would spin and spin and I would just go in circles. I mean my son would just go in circles.... certainly I wouldn't drive the kart. I'm a grown ass man.
To solve this problem, I went to the local sporting goods store and bought a pair of mountain bike tires. I brought them home, cut them with a tin-snips, and used self tapping screws to fasten them around the diameter of the wheels. This would not only add more traction for the kart, but would also dampen the sound, even if only slightly. An added benefit is that the plastic wheels wouldn't grind away into the fine dust that I'd already left all over the driveway. I mean my son.
Once that was done, a new problem presented itself. Now, the kart had so much torque paired with so much grip, that when pressing the accelerator from a dead stop the front of the kart would lift off the ground. And by problem, I actually mean 'super cool thing that all the neighbor kids were impressed by.' Even with the extra battery cell in the front of the kart, it still managed to lift. At this point, and after I had enough fun dicking around with it, I again re-wired the batteries in a way that would allow more run time with slightly less power.
COOL!
This part is pretty short - my son loves Mario Kart - so do I. Obviously it was time to turn this into a battle kart.
I pulled everything apart - sanded any rough edges, and painted all the accessories with white and red paint. And in traditional Mario Kart fashion, gold wheels. I then went to town with the vinyl plotter and cut the decals. Slapped everything together the next day and viola - a Mario Kart. This thing turned out way better than I thought it would - the only thing it was missing was underbody lights.
So I added those too. Oh, and headlights - both of which were controlled by Fast and the Furious style toggle switches. A long night in the garage getting that wired up - again a ton of trial and error but eventually it worked the way I wanted it to. Plus, he could control the color and activity of the lights with a remote control. This is most definitely the coolest Mario Kart this side of Detroit. On Halloween, I even bought a bushel of bananas for him to throw at other trick or treaters... epic.
So cool in fact, MLToys was hosting a video competition to showcase your cool mods. Henrik & I took advantage of this by whipping up a quick video on the ole' iPhone and submitting it - a few months later, we found out we won 1st prize which was a $300 Visa gift card, of which I gave to Hank to go shopping and buy whatever he wanted! A proud moment for both of us.
