My cousin bought my kid a hot pink Little Tikes push car for Spawn’s first birthday. (Note: This is actually a Step 2 push car. Sorry for the confusion!) One day, I put it together and we had a great time wheeling around the neighborhood. My kid LOVES this push car. She will pull it out of the garage and sit in it, waiting for me to push her in it. She prefers the push car over our comfortable, reclinable jogging stroller.
Step 2 Push Car: Wheel Hack
The problem with this Little Tikes Step 2 Buggy push car is that the wheels are plastic. We’ll push the car out and it just “thud thud thuds” along the sidewalk. It’s very loud because there is no shock absorption from wheel to sidewalk/asphalt. I was concerned that Spawn was getting a crappy spinal workout from all that thudding and lack of shock absorption.
So we hacked the wheels.
What you might want handy:
- Drill and screws
- Scissors
- Tape measure
- Gorilla Glue
- Safety gloves
- Screwdriver
- And the most important- an old bike tire.
1. Strip off your old bike tire from the tube. You just need the tire part. We used a pair of regular old scissors. They cut through the tire seamlessly.
Our bike tires were pretty nasty from not riding for so long. We rinsed them off before cutting them into pieces.
2. Cut the tire so that you can wrap it around the wheel as a guide. You can also use a tape measure to measure the circumference of the wheel and then cut your tire. I’m assuming that you’ve already taken the wheels out of the pushcar to do the rest of this hack.
3. Line up your tire around the wheel. Then slather glue to bind the tire to the plastic wheel. We didn’t have any fancy glue on-hand but we did have Gorilla Glue. So that’s what we used.
Use your drill and drillbit to create a few holes in the tire where you’ll be screwing in nails.
4. Drill in the screw. We didn’t use any washers or nuts underneath. The plastic and the rubber held the screw pretty well. We screwed in 3 more screws in each wheel.
5. Re-assemble the wheels and axel back onto the push car.
Voila. The result is pretty neat. The wheels roll without a ton of noise. Spawn’s spine doesn’t seem to be shaking all over as we push the car.
Tell me – what’s your latest product hack?
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This is exactly what I have been looking for! Thankyou for sharing ✌
Wish I’d found this idea sooner! I bought a $5 can of spray-on PlastiDip and will try this if the spray-on rubber doesn’t work. Thanks!
Great Idea! We are planning to get Baby Awesome one of these at some point and will definitely have to try this out.
This is just what I was looking for! What was the diameter of the wheel you used? Was it only one? Thanks!
I enjoy the Kings bumper sticker. 🙂