I got the idea from ar15.com a while ago and was really inspired by a repaint a member did on his kid's Powerwheels Jeep:
In fact, I virtually copied his paint scheme panel for panel, lol!
Anyway, as soon as I saw the thread, I started looking on Craigslist for a used Powerwheels jeep and found this one for pretty cheap. I always wanted a motorized toy like this when I was little, but there was no possible way my parents would buy one for me. This one was cheap enough and the previous owner told me his daughter used it for years, until she was almost 5 or 6. My kid's not even three yet, so he'd get a lot of use out of it, assuming it lasts.
I just wasn't sure about the color, haha!
The first thing I did after buying the Jeep was dig through my shelves to see how many rattle cans I had laying around. Ended up going to crappy tire to pick up a few more, but for anyone else thinking about taking on this project, a good idea is to primer the surfaces. Also, it might be a good idea to scuff the surface as well to help the paint stick to the plastic. Removing the stickers was the biggest pain in the buttocks for this project, those are some stubborn stickers. It probably would have been easier if I had a heat gun handy.
I let my kid test drive it and at 2 yrs old, it was still way too big for him, he's about 2yrs and 8mo now and he's just about able to stomp on the gas and hold it down, but he's not quite there yet for steering the thing on our lawn. I don't think I'm comfortable enough to let him drive around on the street or sidewalk, even with constant supervision, so he gets to stomp around in our backyard, which is a decent size and plenty big enough for him not to get bored.
I was going to just hose the thing down with Krylon when everything on it but decided to strip as many parts off it as I could and mask the rest. The scale model builder in me wanted the thing to look half decent so I started stripping parts off.
The wife also helped mask a lot of the parts.
I should have used primer because it took forever for the paint to cover some of the original plastic coloring.
I also ran out of pain pretty fast. This thing used a surprisingly large amount of paint.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have cheaped out on primer either, but anyway, maybe next time.
After painting all the parts, I slapped it together, created a cool stencil for the hood and gave it a quick burst.
Now all it needs is a rifle rack or a turret mounted Nerf gun for the back, haha!
Some of the original color shows through at wear points however, but what can you do.
Anyway, Luke's pretty happy bombing around in this thing. Now that he's a bit older than when I first started this project, he seems to enjoy it more.
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