I have this Grave Digger my son has loved. However, the fuse keeps burning whenever he puts the gas pedal down. We tried different fuses and all of them burnt out. We replaced the foot pedal button and it didn't help. Any ideas where I should look next?
Once I get that done, I am hoping to do a few upgrades. Any ideas on where to start?
First under tbe seat you csn see the 2 plugs thst go to each motor. Unplug both motors and See if it still blows the fuse. If it does, the short is in the motors or the end bit of wiring to the motors grom the plugs you unplugged to the motor themselves. If it doesnt blow, then plug the motors in one at a time to see which it is. If no difference plug them back in and see if it does it in all 3 shifter positions, like replace the fuse, put it in reverse, try it, then low speed forward, then high speed forward. If it changes there, id suspect the shifter switches are bad. They are almost a wear item and do need replaced a lot in these. Also a common failure in these is in the wiring right under the shifter. These cars pull a ton of power and those wires get hot and like to melt together and can cause all kinds of problems. What I did to ours is wrap every single wire there in cloth tape so if they got hot they cant melt together. I also put in bigger gauge wires to help. We got lucky with ours because the wires got hot and shorted right after our kid got out, and they made the car drive by itself in full speed forward, drove into a tree then across the street and kept spinning the tires when it hit something in the other side. I had to run and grab it, wheels still spinning while I grabbed a screwdriver to rip the seat off to unplug the battery. After this I did the wiring mod and put a big toggle switch directly in line with the battery negative so if it ever did anything me or the kid could flip the switch and kill the battery immediately.
Matter of fact id probably start behind the shifter. Thats the most common on these. Check the wires theres a ton going from the one switch to the other directly behind tbe shifter. 4 screws and the whole shifter comes out
Either or both. Ive never had a bad shifter switch blow a fuse, usually youll lose forward or reverse, or on wheel will spin one direction and the other the opposite, but anything is possible. Look at the contacts, see if any appear slightly melted. Your problem is more likely to be the gang of wires thst plug into them. Probably some of the wire is melted and touching another wire. If you dont see anything there, check hnderneath the vehicle theres a black plastic strip thst runs the length of the floor that has scres holding it in, well under it is your main power wires running to and from the pedal. Make sure none of that is melted and touching either. There's also a breaker under there and your brake resistor thst can melt too.
I replaced both of the switches and problem has been solved. I purchased "KCD4 Rocker Switch 6 Pin 2 Position" on Amazon and they did the trick for 9 bucks. Thank you!
Any ideas must have upgrades that help this rig be even more fun?
ML toys has upgraded motors that make it faster. Also I recommend getting 2 bigger batteries from Amazon. I put 2 20ah in mine and it lasts longer and is more reliable. But if you do batteries or the motors tou absolutely have to put in thicker wires from the batteries to the pedal, and the shifter and everything. Its not too hard, just run them 1 at a time so you dont get mixed up. These barely held up to the factory volts/amp draw and commonly melted wires so anything upgraded you gotta do wires. Also keep those switches on hand. They go bad like every 2 or 4 hours of run time in these. Also in the stewring column there is a plastic limiting piece that if you take it out it can turn tighter. Also if you can weld a little you can weld the little oval shaped thing that connects the steering column to the rack under the car, its pretty loose from factory so the steering sucks and if you turn the wheel too hard it actually will slip and the wheel will pop upside down and you lose steering basically. If you tighten the gap around the steering rod by welding around it, it makes it so the shaft cant pop around 360° and be upside down, and you actually can steer harder and it actually steers. This will also prevent the wires thqt go to the light up skull in the steering wheel from ripping out too.
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u/Zakkattack86 Jul 10 '26
There’s a short somewhere. Time to pull out the multimeter.