The Wagon From Hell
This is the story of Big Tikes And it's project crew: Cole F., Brett F., Matt P., Ryan F., Craig T. and Jeff L. Big tikes is a highly modified little tikes wagon ( you know, the kind you would have killed the class pet for when you were little) Big tikes will be a remote controlled, gas powered wagon with a killer paint job (hahaha) heres the story told my matt.

It was a sunny Wednesday after noon and me and the forresters (cole and brett are twins) were gonna go and do something for the afternoon, we had no clue what but then, we thought of an old wagon sitting in their garden upside down and wrecked.


Now this wagon had seen many years, worst of them being last year when a bunch of us decided that the wagon was best used for driving down hills. It wasn't a week before it was just trashed and no longer a speed cart but a peice of junk, It sat in the garden for a year until today.


The wagon had a bent rear axle with one wheel missing and the other stocker wheel broken in half.
We went to work heres what we did:

1. We removed the old wheel and the axle from the housing where it was in.

2. The axle was bent WAY out of shape so we used a bench press to straighten the axle.

3. We found old lawn mower tires and training wheels, whaich we thought would look cool but the only trouble was attaching them.

4. We drilled holes to hold the wheels on and placed the rear wheels on using soldering wire in the holes as pins. lawn mower tires were placed on in duals (two to each side)then on went the front which were small training wheels so the wagon sat on an incline.

After tikes was standing again we decided the orange and white plastic wasn't cool enough, we also noticed the little tikes embelem which made us call it Big Tikes, after all , we are not Little anymore. We went to Ryan's house to get a paint job, we first painted it black with blue side panels, it looked Very cool. But we hit the first obstacle, the paint did not adhere to the plasitc and therefore chipped. For the second paint job we had the computer guru, craig behind the can and he had a cool idea, putting stripes, so we masked it all up an went to work, the paint dried BUT it still chipped. For the last coat we used high heat paint but like the others they just flaked.


while craig was painting he shocked us with an idea I was stepikcal about, a gas engine. We first thought whipper-snipper motor would do fine so we searched the land in every garage sale we could find, but we also took tikes behind my bike in case we found something. What we found was another obstacle, as we were coming down a large hill and I turned onto a parking lot and tikes lost 2 tires when the weak pin broke (brett also nearly got hit by a car going to retrive them). We were forced to drag it to the corner store and repair it there. on the way we grinded through the plastic alxe housing. we could not reapir it at the store so we phoned and the forresters' dad came and picked up the wounded tikes and took it home.


We now were faced with the challenge of finding tikes a new axle housing. after lots of thinking we decided to use plastic we grifted from IA at school and mold it to cover the axle then screw it to the wagon, it worked so now we turned to the engine.


We looked a bit after that and found a lawn mower at a garage sale for 36 bucks, with some bartering we took the mower for 30. We started it several times and it worked great. We then prodeced to take the engine off the mower chassis and put it on a crate to start it again, of course any engine floods when it is turned upside-down and all so it took some pulling but finally it started. But then we tried it again but the recoil wouldn't crank the engine. In other words the pull start only would turn the crank if the cord was about 2 1/2 feet out of the engine. We still were successful in starting the engine again.

During all this engine work craig was busy whidling away at a power converter to make a kill switch, it looked nice when he finished and it clipped perfectly to the side, the only problem being that nobody could touch the switch when the engine was turning or they would get zapped (believe me I learned thet the hard way)

It was the end of the easter break and we needed to take a break form tikes and get back to school. That weekend we proceded to take dimensions of the engine and actually cut the back end out to acommodate the long engine. This brings us to today, we have a cut up scratched tikes sitting in the grass with the mower beside it, the only work done since then is that we found a new kill switch a household lightswitch and a sound system consisiting of a loudspeaker we picked up for 2 dollars.


we took it to jeff's house to fix some axle problems caused from hauling 70lbs of craig's garage sale loot (in case you didn't know, Craig has a sixth sense for garage saleing), in doing so we bent the axles. Again we took off the axle straightened it and put it back together using the old pins made of soldering wire. We didn't get half way back to ryans house (tike's current home) when we dropped the rear wheel pin (again), so me and jeff went parallel on our bikes and carried it home.


When we got to ryans house I was presented with Codder pins to hold the wheels that acuallty were strong. We upgraded the front axle pins and went to work on the back, but that skinny axle was too short and we needed a longer axle. To our luck ryans dad had a rod for tightening garage door springs that we could use. The rod was thicker and longer by 3-4 inches. After some fabriacting we replaced the old stocker axle with the new beefy one (which in the end will end up on the front because the differential has it's own) after that we just screwed around and tested tikes new wheels, so far, they are holding up very well.

Well it's been a month since we thought about tikes, we've all been busy with finals, but now that everyone but me has a final on monday we took the day to work on tikes. The previous day I had an Enlightenment while studying for finals: That flimsy plastic bed is not gonna support that engine (duh), the solution?, a frame, I suppose anybody could have told us that but it took 4 months to figure out. I figured we could build a frame out of wood and put all the mechanical stuff on it then slip the body on for a nice clean look.


I was ready to start on tuesday becuase i thought everyone would be studyin but craig and the rest of them said they wanted to work so i said, ok lets go and get it. We got to ryans house and pulled tikes out of resting, since craig had a little workshop in his basement and we had wood to chop we hauled tikes and some of ryan's old fire wood to craigs house (workshop number 4). We first cut the bottom of tikes body off, all we got now is just the top part. We then started to fabricate the main frame rails which will hold all the weight.

The next day me and craig assembled the frame and attached it to our modifyed body. We also sorted out the problem of the steering: use the old one! we cut the front part which had the steering pieces still on it from the bottom and screwed it to the frame. The engine is just about ready to be bolted to the frame and after that, the differental and then the steering system then the remote control receiver.

A few days later we went and got the engine and the rest of the wagon's components we had and brought them to craig's where tikes was staying until july 4th (craigs goin on vacation). We started by cleaning the engine a bit and inspecting to make sure all the parts were there. We re-assembled the engine and went to work on the little bit of plastic that needed to be gone before we put the engine on (it was then that we broke another jig saw blade and matt found out a drill is useless in reverse). We got everything ready bt then we saw that the engine had a 2 level oil pan and a bunch of bolts sticking out. We went out and found the diameter of the hole in the lawn mower and proceeded to cut the same hole in the frame to mount the engine.

Craig finished up that hole for the engine while I figured out a way to transport big tikes since it had no wheels. The solution? A lawn-mower handle with wheels on it. Matt went and built it and jeff attempted to test or as I call it, destroy the trailer, but matt's skills in construction proved too good.

The day came when tikes got it's eviction notice from craigs house on the account he was leaving and we needed to work on tikes (hey the rest of us don't stop for 1 member, it's called a disfunctional team hehe). To prepare tikes for the long journey to the forresters house we needed to bolt the engine to the frame which was done. We loaded tikes up on the trailer (which might I add is a foldable one because of matt's inventive soul) We loaded it up on the trailer with all of tikes other parts and took it to the forresters (workshop 1 the birthplace of The big tikes project) where it now lies where it awaits the differntal which IS on it's way, just as soon as matt's grandpa drops it off.

Well Craig has returned and it was time to do some work to tikes. We first went to fix the bolt that was missing on the engine, it was then when matt and the forresters decided the frame and trailer could use a nice treatment of fire red paint, after convincing brett to clean the brushes afterwards (brett hates turpintine) we gave the trailer 1 coat and the frame 2 coats, it looks awesome. When the paint dried we put the engine back on

We then tried to start the engine, the first 2 hours went with no success until we found out craig (he denys it) left the head bolts "finger Tight" when he went to go put the engine back together after looking at the worsening recoil. Because of this we were loosing TONS of compression and the engine wouldn't start, the third hour we removed the spark plug and cleaned it. After it fired matt realized he was holding the throttle wide open and turned it the other way and sure enough it started.

The next day we started work at 1:00PM, we went to 10:30PM in that time we came up with a control box and an un wired throttle control and even a set of signal lights. The throttle has alot of wires, the motor we are using requires 8 wires, we have them up through the body, ready to go. The signal lights DID work until jeff busted one of the bulbs.

The Next day matt and the forresters went to start the engine again (with the muffler off hehehe) but on the way out of the garage another craig created diasater, there were 2 bolts on the back of the shroud near the gas tank that we put on at ryans house, when craig went to pull the engine apart and decided those bolts wern't "needed" so he left em off during reassembly and left the back loose. But anywho brett was carrying the back when his arm moved the loose shroud and pulled the fuel line from the tank spilling gas allover himself.

The next day we took the engine from forresters place and took it to jeffs house where his dad looked at the engine to improve preformance and fix a couple little things.


Well its february now and alot has been done to our wagon of evil and hate, August brought us nothing until september, School had started again and in the spare time we had the forresters and matt manage to finish wiring the throttle control's eight wires. Big tikes was put in the shed at the forresters house where it stayed all winter until january.

Since Matt and cole were in IA in the first semester, and they were done thier housewiring early. It was now, the issue of rear drive was solved once and for all, instead of the differrental drive which was the idea from the start matt and cole divised a way to use 2 pullys and a belt to drive the two wheels, thier idea though involved welding, a skill which none of us were proficiant with. Luckily the other industrial arts class at school was in grade 11 and they were welding. So we packed up big tikes and prepared it to go to school where the final drive compontents would be fabricated and installed.

Once it got there we took care of some other buisiness pertaining to the muffler, it needed to be re routed forward and up to avoid melting the plastic body. We welded a pipe to the side of the exsiting muffler and plug welded off all the little holes.

Now came time to work on the final drive, we went and bought parts (2 pulleys and a V-belt) at Princess Auto for 30 dollars. We started working on an extension of the frame which was nececary becuase the belt needed room to twist orientation from horizontal to vertical, we took a peice of 1 1/2" square tubing and cut it to fit the back of the frame were it would support some of the extention frame. We built the 2 extention frame rails that would be screwed to the wood frame and welded to the Square tubing. We put the mouting plate and whatever else together using 1/2 steel rods. After that was welded, we worked on alignment of the ex. frame, when it was right we cut 2 peices of 1/2" steel rod to bridge the gap between the rod and the steel square tubing. after that was welded we turned to making a sort of bushing to hold the axle. we constructed it in a sort of pillow block style but the mouting as a deep hole that slid right on to the frame rails, were it was drilled through and screws we put though, we mounted the axle rear pully, and figured out a way to secusre the axle to the tires using screws, we concluded that we had, after almost 10 months finished the rear drive (The Big Tikes Crew would like to extend thanks to Yirgo Matheos for doing all the welding work during the time it was in the schools shop). We loaded it up and put it back to rest.

Next Item of buisiness the completion of the front wheel independant suspension steering, elcectical and lighing effects, and Starting and testing. Work though will not resume until it gets warmer or we can find an indoor work shop, testing for sure will not begin until waterproofing and finishing work is done

Updated February 15, 2004