Son's custom stroller

Some of you may have seen my daughter's hot rod wagon

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=368304

Well I figured my son needed one of his own and since i had a replica petal car lying around i figured what better use for it then a stroller.

Here is how it looked before i started



Now the plan is to get it as low as possible. I'm aiming for 1" of ground clearance.

After i tore it down the first thing i had to address was the wheels and tires. Flat out i hate the ones it come with. they are way out of proportion with the car and additionally they need to be a smaller diameter to get it low so after some searching at local hardware stores i came up with these



They are the size i was looking for and have a steel wheel and a more car looking tread

with the car stripped i cut away from the seat just enough to clear the tires



then i mocked it up



happy with the stance i started on the frame. Using 1/2" square tubing, I made a simple chassis and made a rear axle out of 1/2" round tube to help keep it light.



Up front I made some spindles from the round tube



then made mounts using bolts



To make the wheels look a little more realistic, I machined the center down a bit.



Here is the chassis as a roller



Then i made a mount for the front of the body



Here is the completed chassis mounted in the body



and finally the most important test fit.







I think he likes it!

There is a lot more to do. I'm planning on handle bar steering, seat back, floors, inner fenders etc. Hopefully I'll have it done for the summer car shows.

 

That is super cool,
Nice Job!

 

Start 'em young. Good job Dad !!

 

Very awesome.
Ill defintley be doing something like this when i ever have a kid.

 

Nice job, looks like he's already enjoying it.

 

Thats awesome love it! Can't start them out young enough!

 

I bet that smile made it all worth it! That is a stand out gift from the heart, love it!

 

These kinds of builds keep on giving. He will be hooked for life, and when he is done with it you can hang it up in the shop!

 

Awesome. Krylon makes some spray paint called "fusion" or something or other that works on rubber and plastic.. it would work well to make those tires into wide whites!

 

Very cool... he is stuck now.When you go sleddin at that young age.....there is no turning back

 

I would add a rubber edge to the windshield frame to avoid sudden stop or kid jump up face bites. That looks like a real winner for any young rodder to be brought up in.

 

That is so cool !

 

Thanks everyone! I'm not working on it right now with the new house and all but i hope to get back into it soon.

I'm planning on doing just that and hopefully when he has kids of his own he will want to use it for them.

Actually i have some real white wall tire paint but that was the plan from the beginning

The edge is rolled over so it isn't sharp and i plan on putting belts in so he should be ok but thanks for the concern

 

Cool Car! I just built a 36 Ford for my Son. He is 7 months in this picture.

 

Wish I could fit in it..........awesome!

 

That's really nice! I wish i had the time to finish mine Damn house work!

 

Cool!

 

Awesome Job, Gives a guy a inspiration....

 

Great work! Working on my sons Murray flat face now. But in the mean time I built this.

 

heres mine great work on your im planing on doing a few more soon

 

Salf100 - Hmmm ... you've got me thinking about an oversized Tonka dump truck project. Cool.

 

Hmmm... At his age, if you are going to be bringing him to car shows with out your wife, I would conciter a custom made exhaust system. (;-)

 

Thanks for the replies guys. I finally have some decent progress on this. I was trying to get it ready for the Jalopy showdown this weekend.

Anyways the next step in this was the build a floor. I had an old road sign laying around and figured it would do the job well.

Here it is cut out and the sides bent



and fitted to the stroller.



Then i needed inner fenders to cover the tires. Simple square fenders were not going to cut it so to make something more resembling the outer fenders i made a buck with some scrap steel and round bar and formed the edge around it



then did some test fitting





Tacked it up



and fitted one more time



Once i finish the wends and clean it up it should look like one piece.

more later

 

Thanks again guys

With the body mostly done i turned my attention to the steering. Yep i said steering I figured it was probably going to be pretty heavy when done and a fixed handle is so... boring so being a glutton for punishment i set to try to figure out an effective, compact, simple and practical steering system. no easy task but after ruling out shafts and u joints I settled on a cable system.

To start i needed a handle so i added some square tubing to the chassis



Then i made the handle out of the same stock



And welded on pivot plates



Next was the steering components.

I had a little hint in the first post months ago in this pic.



here you can see the spindle mounts as simple bolts

With that done i created the spindles with tubing



Next i made the linkage out of tubing, bolts and lawn tractor rod ends



Then added some flat stock to connect it to the spindles



For the cable system i needed a way to hold the cables, which turned out to be standard replacement bike brake cables by the way.

To do this i needed to reduce some 1/2" tubing to the size of the cable cover



trim them to size



Then i cut some end plates



TIG'd them in place



and cut the slot for the cable



Now to make the cable system work i added pivot plates to the top of the handle bar



Then a handle was added



drilled some slots for the cables



Then the holders



on the handle i made plates to hold the ends of the cables



Here it is all together

 

And after some tweaking here is the final result.





I know the steering seems a bit unorthodox but it really works well. I have vid of it in action that i'll get up soon.

 

thats crazy! whats next little air bags?

 

LOL! i may need them! it's about an inch off the ground and with the little testing i did it bottoms out some. it's not too bad though.

 

That's rad man.

 

Impressive.

Now, what about the custom wheel covers?

-W

 

Thanks guys

I have some ideas

I didn't get to the showdown but I got the boy out in the driveway to test it out and he loves it!











And here is a vid if it in action. I'm happy with how it works, now it's time to finish it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvQVCdTNXbg&feature=youtu.be