OT: Wiring on grand kids power wheels!!!

JD Seller

Well-known Member
The grand kids got given a power wheels Jeep. It is an older one 1996 model. It had quit going and the fellow that had it had put in both batteries new and new drive motors. He spent as much in parts as you can buy a new one for.

This one has two 6 volt batteries. In low it runs the power in parallel and for high they run them in series.

I have checked out all the switches and they are working as the wiring diagram says they should.

IF I jump power directly to the motors they run fine. The harness is OK too. The high low switch is working and the reverse switch is too.

The only thing missing is a resister on the ground side of the throttle switch. This should just mean the electric braking effect would not work. I think.

Have any of you worked on one of these heart burn created things before???

The two younger Grandsons are hyper about getting this going. It not going is costing me some serious Grand Dad points. LOL. SO HELP!!!!!!
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I've never worked on one... but I'm going to be watching this post, as my kids' power wheels Jeep is needing help, too...
 
The kids hand me down gator quit working and turned out to be a broken wire in the harness somewhere by the battery. Same as you all the switches checked good. Jiggled it around and it has been working so I left it alone. This one the charger plugs directly into the battery so assuming the constant connecting and disconnecting the battery caused the wiring problem. Mine is powered by a single 12 volt battery.
 
The 'throttle switch' (at least on the one my kids have) is really just an on/off switch. I think he called it a throttle because it looks and acts like the gas pedal on a car.
 

There are 2 different wiring schemes here the one on the left switches the batteries in series or parallel, and the wring diagram on the right switches the Motors in series or parallel to provide the high/low function.

The resistor connected to the throttle switch is a Dynamic Braking (DB) load, a missing resistor here, would just mean the when the throttle is released the unit will coast instead of the load resistor introducing a load across the motors (which will be operating as generators when the unit is coasting) to provide braking.

One good possibility here would be that on the physical wiring configuration the resistor was used as a tie point and when the resistor was removed someone did not re-connect the 2 leads that used the resistor as a tie point.

How are you testing the switch with power on or by using continuity tester?

There are many possibilities for wiring errors or open or bad connections here, Also the jumpers on one of the switches could be missing.
 
Been through that.

The SWITCHES are bad news.

They are WAY underrated in current capacity for the application and if the kid drives it pretty much steady "til the batteries go dead, they will overheat and the contacts will squash out of position into the heat-softened plastic.

They MAY test OK with an Ohmmeter, but NOT carry the current needed to run the motors.

You need to check with a Voltmeter across each set of contacts in use on each switch in use for the particular function that doesn"t work UNDER LOAD, in other words with the "gas pedal" depressed to figure out which contacts have the voltage dropped across them.

Better put it on some sort of kickstands sop it doesn"t run away from you if it DOES kick in!.

If there are TWO or more contacts failed, it"s gonna be like a series set of Christmas lights to troubleshoot

In the era of your"s I had to keep two running. I had a box of switches and would troubleshoot by swapping "em out.

As a matter of fact, I would just replace all three switches and verify that it works, then you could swap the old ones back in one at a time and have spares for the ones that ARE working correctly.
 

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