Power Wheels Pinion for #3 gearbox by Phate_exe

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

After upgrading an old 12 volt Power Wheels ride on toy with more powerful motors, it quickly destroyed the original pinion gears.
They use regular 540- and 550-size motors common to RC vehicles, but the pitch and tooth depth on the #3-style gearbox common on the older vehicles are not compatible with commonly-available pinion gears, so I modeled a replacement based on pictures and measurements taken from the destroyed gears.
Printed in PLA, light sanding was necessary for a tight fit with the retaining clip, and the gear fits and runs smoothly in the gearbox. Pinion v3.5 has a slightly oversized center-bore adjusted to better fit on motor shafts when printed on a consumer FDM printer. I've added the Pinion v3 model which has more exact dimensions (but may be slightly difficult to install onto a motor).
UPDATE:
Performed testing with two sets of PLA pinions. On a 12 volt power wheels upgraded with Traxxas Titan 550 Marine motors, one pinion fails after 10-15 minutes of hard/abusive driving (aka donuts and 180's), primarily due to the shock of having full power suddenly applied, and the second pinion fails in another 10 minutes or so under the increased strain of propelling the vehicle entirely on one motor.
Running at 6 volts with the Titan 550's (similar speed/power to a stock 12 volt power wheels) they show no sign of failing any time soon.
I'm having a few sets professionally printed in additional materials for durability testing and to see if the limitation is just my printer.