Bautia Kids Tricycle with Push Handle for Toddlers 1-4 ...

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One of my goals with this project was to try and keep the tricycle as stock as possible. Bigger wheels on the back would have offered more clearance. Baskets on the front or boxes on the back would have provided more places to conceal electronics. Hoverboard hub motor wheels would have provided a more elegant, modern solution. But all of those options would have altered the iconic look of the tricycle and distorted the illusion. 

The first thing you&#;ll want to do is replace the back axle with threaded rod. This will provide some extra length to set the wheels a little further apart so you can squeeze in the belt gear. 

Threaded rod also allows you use nuts to hold the ends together instead of the push-on caps that come included. This means you can undo the ends more easily to service and modify the axle. Those push-on caps are really meant to just go on once and stay put.

Two thick plastic washers come included with the tricycle, to go on the axel between the wheel and the tricycle body. I reused those as spacers by putting them both on the wheel that doesn&#;t have the gear. It keeps things looking even.

For the geared side, you&#;ll need to attach the gear directly to the wheel. I did this by drilling four matching holes in both the wheel and the gear, applying a generous amount of 5-minute epoxy between the two parts, stacking them on top of each other, and dropping a few small bolts into the drilled out holes for added strength. 

The bolts don&#;t need to thread in or fit snugly. The epoxy should hold them in place. Nails or even dowels or chopsticks would work too. The idea is just to more fully fuse the gear with the wheel and not rely entirely on the layer of epoxy to do the job.

Next, you&#;ll want to mount the motor to the tricycle. More importantly, you&#;ll want to mount the motor in such a way that there&#;s not much slack in the timing belt. 

I did this by mounting the motor bracket to a length of aluminum bar (easy to find at any local hardware store), placing the motor in the bracket, attaching the belt, and marking the position everything needed to be for it to fit right.

Once that&#;s worked out, you go back, drill some holes, cut and shape the aluminum bar for your needs, paint it, and then attach it all using whatever method you&#;re comfortable with. I used some M3 button head bolts and lock nuts. 

If you get the fit a little wrong, don&#;t sweat it. You can nudge things by carefully bedding the aluminum bar in or out to adjust the motor position, or getting a slightly bigger or smaller belt, or getting a slightly bigger or smaller gear for the motor. 

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While we&#;re down here near the bottom running board, think about how you&#;re going to mount all the other elements down here. It&#;s a tight fit, and the axel awkwardly runs through everything. Plus, you can&#;t have things dangling too low or they risk dragging on the ground.

How you end up fitting and attaching it all is up to you. Here&#;s a photo of how I organized things. In some cases (like the battery) I riveted mount-head zip ties to the tricycle frame and then zip-tied the components into place.

Your Arduino will need to go in a mountable case of some kind. Here&#;s the one I used. It&#;s a 3D printed design by Alex Torres.

Once everything&#;s dialed in, remember to add some hot glue on the wiring connections to keep them in place and create some strain relief. You can always remove the hot glue with isopropyl alcohol later if you need to do repairs.

At some point you&#;ll need to mount the servo push rod to the front wheel&#;s fork. That&#;s pretty much just drilling a hole and loosely attaching a rod end with a bolt. By using a nut on both sides of the fork, you can get the bolt to stick out a bit, which provides just a little extra turning radius.

You&#;ll also want to run some threaded rod up through the seat when you&#;re ready to mount your pupper. I believe I used ¼-20 rod, but use whatever&#;s convenient. The length you&#;ll need really depends on the size of the puppet you&#;re using. Because the seat comes off, it&#;s really easy to make adjustments, and saw the rod down bit by until you have something you like.

Also, I added a tennis ball to the top of the seat rod. Not only does this help prevent the puppet&#;s head from slipping around but it also makes it less likely that someone will fall onto the tricycle and impale themselves.

Finally, you&#;ll want to ad some weights to the pedals. Without something to keep them weighed down slightly, they&#;ll tilt back and forth as the wheel turns and you lose some of the illusion of feet pressing down on them. 

I had some Simpson Strong-Tie Bearing plates in my junk pile that worked well for this, though something smaller would be better. I filed the plastic pedals down a bit for a more flush surface and painted the plates red to match. Then I glued and clamped the plates on with E. 

The unintended upside of using these bearing plates is that they come with a hole in the middle, which is handy once you&#;re zip-tying puppet feet to the pedals.

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