Fischer Price Power Wheels as a base?

[Half Shell]

Has anyone had any experience hacking a fischer price power wheels toy (the ones small children ride) in order to use as a small scale car platform? They're fairly cheap and you can fit a LOT of hardware on them.

http://www.fisher-price.com/us/powerwheels/

You can get them as cheap as 100 dollars - maybe even better if you craigslist or ebay them.


As a side note - this idea was inspired by coming across OpenVulture, and seeing that they used a fischer price power wheels car as a test vehicle. That being said, I plan on using my own stuff, not OpenVulture... though I'm sure many of you would like to take a look at it so here it is:

http://hackaday.com/2009/02/06/openvulture-software-for-unmanned-vehicles/

[colorclocks]

Yes, I'm using these as a base for robot lawn mowers.  Here's my first attempt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuXqg4q3cQ8
I got the Barbie Jeep for free, from a neighbor who was trying to throw it away.  I got a second, smaller one for $20.

[airman00]

http://narobo.com/robots/Barbie/Barbie.html

[Half Shell]

Yes, I'm using these as a base for robot lawn mowers.  Here's my first attempt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuXqg4q3cQ8
I got the Barbie Jeep for free, from a neighbor who was trying to throw it away.  I got a second, smaller one for $20.

Hows speed control with them? Is it all on and off or is there some variable speed control? How hard was it to get the controls for it?

[Razor Concepts]

Those are on/off. The motors are just 550 sized brushed motors, so you can get one of those sabertooth motor controllers.