Racing Power Wheels Part 7: Setting up the Steering





With the drive axle pretty much done the next thing to work on would be the steering system of the Power Wheels Dune Racer. The above pictures were just some shots during the process of fabricating the steering system. So to start things off, I'll talk about the individual parts of the steering system.

The first part I'll bring up is the spindles along with their brackets. They came together as a complete kit. Below is an image of the kit that I got from BMI Karts.


Racing Power Wheels Part 6: Motor Testing, Controller, and Sparks

So it's been a while since progress has been made on the Power Wheels Dune racer. I've been busy with school and it set me back on this project. Below is a video of some of the progress that was made last time.

      

It's not a really good video. It was mostly composed of videos that I recorded here and there and there were some parts that I didn't get to record.

But below is a picture of where I was at last time with all the electrical parts mounted on some diamond plating that was cut out to fit the back portion of the frame.


In the picture above you can see the 3 12V batteries being held down with some rubber straps. On the back side of the battery pack I have two eye bolts that are supporting the back side of the battery pack. On the front side of the battery pack, which can't be seen in the picture above, I have two L brackets supporting the front side of the battery pack.

You can see where I have mounted the motor controller. I may need to create some kind of barrier of some sort to prevent the wires from going towards the sprocket. Heading towards the front of the Power Wheels, the motor was placed in front of the controller. It took me some trial and error to decide where to place the motor to be able to install the chain.

In the end, I found that maybe I should have move the motor just a little closer to the axle sprocket. The reason for this is because when we installed the chain it was quite difficult. So I had the motor and the axle sprocket not fully bolted down to install the chain. Once installed, I bolted the axle sprocket to the sprocket hub and bolted the motor down. Once this was done, the chain was on pretty tight without any kind of slack. I believe it's too tight. So I may enlarge the mounting holes for the motor to have some play for adjustment and then bolt it down.

Here's another picture of the setup in the back without the plastic Power Wheels body. It is a much clearer picture and you better see the parts on the back.