I powerwashed the snot out of it, and other than a few areas looking a little worn, it's more or less complete. It's unlikely I will replace the decals. I found a hood and a set of headlight covers for it (only available as a complete front bumper) but I'm holding out to see if this is a toy he's actually going to use. I hooked up a motorcycle battery I had with some jumper wires and verified everything worked. Ordered 12V 12AH battery x 2 off Amazon, a kill switch, a 40a resetting circuit breaker, some charge posts. I had plenty of wire and waterproof connectors around.
The stock battery tray needs to be significantly cut to get them to fit down low how I wanted them, they are both too wide left to right and too deep front to back to fit all the way down at the bottom. They clear the tires and other moving parts underneath by a mile. There is no need for a hold down, I would not want to be the guy who has to eventually get them out of there. I made a simple diagram to follow I will see if I can find it, but essentially the factory black 14awg ground wire gets a ring terminal to the black jump post, then to battery 2. the white factory 12awg wire gets a ring to the circuit breaker, then to the kill, then to the positive of battery 1. negative of battery 1 to postive of battery 2 (wired in series). The wire charts said 14, 12, or 10 was appopriate for 12V 40A @ 4ft with a 2% acceptable loss, and since the factory has a 12 positive and a 14 negative I kept mine the same. The circuit is limited by the size of its smallest wire, there is no value to be had by upgrading just portions of it to 10. The kill switch wiring is enclosed in an abrasive protecting sheath and secured to the bottom of the upper hood mounts to keep it away from the left front tire.
I checked the rear axle for straight and put M-L toys "race" bearings on all 4 corners and a set of their collars on the rear (replace the axle clip nuts). The axle is actually a little short with all this on as you can see, that's actually with one washer removed, so I may put a longer axle in it. I'm considering just threading the ends too and finding a way to fix it to the body to ensure it cannot rotate. I ground flats into the axle at their recommendation.
view pics here:
https://imgur.com/gallery/Jn9nFMZ
He had his first go of it and his new Paw Patrol helmet at Easter with the whole family here and the 8 of us adults just played chase the car as he basically understands punch the throttle and hold on. We are working on "stop" (release pedal). he has not mastered steering at all, but with enough watchers we avoided problems. the kill switch proved very valuable, but I'm probably going to convert it to RC for now and lock it in shifter center position (12V).
