This Combination of Barbie Car and Go-Kart Can Reach 70 MPH
Just watch a Frankenstein’s Monster of children’s toys in action.
Edwin Olding, with a little help from his friends, has built a Barbie Power Wheels Mustang that has quite a bit more pep than the stock configuration. In fact, this vehicle is the marriage of a plastic Power Wheels body with an old go-kart frame.
Olding told The Drive, "I wanted to find the cutest Barbie Power Wheels car online and turn it into a drift kart."
With the miniature Mustang's tiny electric motor and plastic tires, that would not be an easy task. Instead of trying to boost the Power Wheels' weak performance, Olding decided to chop out everything that wasn't the car's outer shell and drop that onto a pre-built go-kart found on Craigslist. That, however, presented its own problems. The kart's frame couldn't fit into the Mustang's 36-inch wheelbase, so it had to be cut down and welded back together.
The kart's lackluster rear engine was then ditched in favor of a bigger one up front. This engine was pulled from a Honda CRF 230 dirt bike and has been bored out to 240 cubic centimeters with an upgraded piston and camshaft.
According to Olding, the pink mini-Mustang can reach 70 miles per hour and makes about 24 horsepower. The Honda unit comes with a six-speed gearbox, which is now utilized by a clutch pull handle on the steering wheel, and a gear lever in the cockpit. All in all, the project took about five days, and a time-lapse of the build process can be seen in the video below.
Olding wanted to build a Power Wheels car that could drift, and he succeeded on that front. In this following video, you'll see that the Mustang has no problem breaking the rear tires loose, although the kart's shortened wheelbase does seem to make handling a bit skittish.