Hello All,
Newbie here. Has anyone ever converted a Power Wheels ride-on to RC?
Any/all advice gladly accepted! <g>
Regards,
Jim

I saw one that a real world dirt oval fan turned into a RC sprint car...cooler....drove the thing over to his buds, for a quick COLD ONE!

I would imagine it would be rather simple, with the steering being the only real engineering chore.
you would need to create a suitable tie rod or rack system, to couple the front wheels to a good 1/4 scale servo, for the weight, this servo would be more economical....smaller faster stronger servos are available, but at a higher cost.
The throttle could probaly be scavenged and mounted to something witha servo to control it. then some sort of RX power is all you would need, which a regular sport pack or some unmatched cells made into a 5 cell rx would work fine....providing you have some sort of peak charger that can be adjusted for the cell count...your in there...if you have an esc laying around that just dosent work right, but powers up the car, you could use that as a voltage regulator, and then just use a refular radio shack 6 cell pack you can charge off a cheep timer charger. someone might have an old futaba or duratrx esc, that is fried but still powers up, they will give you...just be sure to insulate to motor leads with some good elctrical tape or something to prevent a short and melt down.

I did this with my son's old FUN CART / go cart when he 1...got too big for it..and 2 the local cops put a ban or riding it even in the yard...some buds and I got a bit inebriated one night, and there it sat...so we rigged this Briggs 5 hp buggy with some servos...tossed one "my pet monster" in the driver seat with some duct tape, and drove down town to a parking lot we could conceal ourselves in and had a little fun with those onry cops.......not recomended tho...we got caught, paid fines, and allmost got a DUI outta the deal when the desk sgt figgured one of us had to drive the stuff and the rest of us to the park...lucly they had SOME sence of humor, and let it go with all of us feeling a few bucks lighter in the pockett....LOL!

The stering is the hard part...we just welded a little plate and mounted the 1/4 scale servo lke a pan car, but made a mechanical advantage lever to contect it too the existing tie rods...this was our down fall as we lost steering..but iy was a 3 hr job max.....take some time and figgure a good system out....might have to have a part or too machined, but nothing too hard too do.
Go look at a 1/4 scale site like WCM, or PRO1 to see how they do it..those cars hook up pretty good on the front end, and weight around 37 pounds.
I would think at worst 2 cheep high tork 1/4 scale servos, with heavy savors, tied to thew same pice of 1/8" thick x 3/4" wide x 2" -3" long plate..with an appropriate size hole in each end...and a tie rod going off either end to that sides sterring knuckle...and then an good soild m,ounting sytem and your done....for FWD revers you will probably want a 3 channel radio...like mabey a t max radio for something cheep...then re-wire the fwd/rev switch too a relay, and trip the relay from a dp/dt toggle you can work with a cheep servo.....I would think a "duck bill" toggle with a hole drilled in the lever would hook too a simple tie rod most easily......the throttle would be jsut a siimple bolt a plate to it, that the throttle servo and connect to and work it like the kids foot would.

If I had it here...I could better visualize but this should "CONFUSE YOU" enough to either get started, or abandon the project...LOL!
good luck!

I did one about 5 years or so ago. In that one I had to modify the transmitter so a dog could control the throttle and this may not be a requirement for you. The only change I would do if I had to do it again is to use a larger 1/4 scale servo for the steering.

You can see my article about it at http://www.hobbytalk.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=20