This post details how I replaced the noisy plastic wheels on a Little Tikes push car with high-quality rubber-coated steel wheels. The default wheels are probably OK for grass but on pavement they make a deafening grinding noise and I felt bad for my neighbors (and my son) just going one block over to the park behind our house.

To be clear, upgrading the wheels doesn’t make economic sense: A push car with noisy wheels costs $60 and the “whisper ride” model with rubber-coated wheels costs $80. Four steel wheels will set you back about $40 before considering time and additional parts. But we were emotionally attached to our push car and I thought it’d be a fun project.

Before switching out the wheels I did try just hot-glueing strips of old bike-tires to the plastic wheels but that didn’t last.

Wheel Change Instructions

Materials:

• 7″ steel wheels. I used these 7″ x 1.5″ ones.
• Assuming your wheels have 1/2″ ID ball bearings and the axle rod on the push-car is 3/8″ you need 3/8″ ID x 1/2″ OD metal sleeves of some kind. These are not strictly required but the wheels wobble without them
• 3/8″ push nuts (you may be able to re-use the ones that come one the car if you take them off carefully)

Steps:

1. Yank the axle-rods off the bottom of the car. The axles snap into the bottom of the molded plastic car body
2. Get the push nuts off the axle ends and take the old wheels off
3. Press the 3/8″ x 1/2″ sleeves on the axle ends. This may require some combination of sanding, lubrication and hammering
4. Mount the new wheels on the sleeves on the axles and put the whole thing back together.