P-P-Powerwheels Racing
Who wants to mod and race Power Wheels?
All of you? That's what i thought.
We'll be organizing into teams, and having each team mod, race, fix, and continue racing a Power Wheels vehicle through a series of trials and tribulations. For $40, you can have your very own functional Power Wheels, for you and your team (if you'd like to work in a group) to modify and race!
Join in, or you will be missing the most epic event in hackerspace history: the Power Wheels Racing Series.
Talk to nicky if you're interested, or just come to the space and talk to us there!
The Plan
San Francisco has Bring Your Own Big Wheel. BYOBW is cool, but is very poorly suited for Chicago, since it requires hills. Instead of hills, we have all kinds of boring flat land, and vehicles don't just merrily roll along flat land.
They need a little...power.
Enter the POW-POW-Power Wheels Racing Series! This is a full eight-course racing series in which each team gets one (and only one!) Power Wheels to last them all summer. Each team must build, modify, and hack its vehicle to perform as well as psosible through the entire season. The eight events include:
- Drag Race
- Road Course
- Oval Track
- Off Road Rally
- Relay Race
- Night Race (Tokyo Drift)
- Soccer Match
- 24 Hours of Fisher Price (Endurance Race)
There will be points and championships awarded in three categories:
- Driving
- leaving everyone else on the track in the dust!
- Vehicle Construction
- using your engineering chops to make your Power Wheels as powerful as possible!
- Moxie
- cool artistic designs, epic wins that make the crowd go "oooh!", or epic failures that make the crowd go "oooh!"
We have already acquired nine Power Wheels, which are at the space. All you need to do is pay $40 (per team, NOT per person!) and claim your vehicle! The vehicles don't have batteries yet, but very soon we should have some inexpensive batteries that will do a better job at powering your vehicle than the absurdly expensive stock Fisher Price batteries.
What are you waiting for?
Progress
Materials
Currently have the unmodified Power Wheels stacked in the garage:
Site
New site is up! Go here to register teams, make your own splash page, etc:
Teams
J Squad
- J. Bunker
- J. Burke
- J. Kantarek
- J. Kruger
- J. Thraen
The Todd Ianuzzi Experience
- nicky
- Sarah S.
- Tim S.
E Team (Under New Management)
- Eric 1
- Eric 2
- Shannon
- Satan
- John S.
- Verbal Kint
- Sacha
Info
- http://pppwrs.com/ Official Website
- Official Blog Post
- @pppwrs on Twitter
- New Promotional Video http://vimeo.com/4751780
- Open source motor controller
Contacts
- nicky, to buy and claim your Power Wheels.
- Jim, to sign up teams.