Compare Power Wheels 12 Volt Battery 00801-0638 and 00801-1661

Question: What's the difference between the all gray Power Wheels 12 volt battery and the gray with orange top 12V battery?

Question: Can I use the 12V orange top battery if my toy came with the all gray one?

It is questions like these that are commonly asked by parents and grandparents wanting to replace a dead or dying Fisher Price Power Wheels battery in the their beloved ride-on-toy. Forum users at ModifiedPowerWheels.com actually offered a simplistic answer to this question back in 2008, but for those of you that do not enjoy reading through forum style text that may or may not be correct you should just scroll down this page to gain all the knowledge you never knew you needed.

Reviewing the Battery Differences

The Internal Breaker

Aside from their old part numbers, pretty much everything between these two batteries is the same. However there is one major difference pertaining to the internal breaker. The Orange Top battery has a 40A breaker vs. the 30A breaker found in the all grey battery.

Some of the newer Fisher Price ride-on-toys such as the Jeep Hurricanes and Smart Cars draw more power from the battery and require the higher threshold provided from the orange batteries internal breaker. Otherwise the original All Gray breaker would keep tripping. Each time the breaker trips and re-sets it becomes ever-so-slightly weaker. Overtime this means it will start tripping at lower and lower thresholds rendering the battery useless despite the actual mechanics of the battery found in the bottom 4 inches being fine.

So, if your Power Wheels toy came with the Orange Top battery we highly recommend NOT replacing it with the standard All Gray battery.

Purchasing the correct one will help to prevent hardship down the road.

How the Power Wheels 12 Volt Battery Connects to the Toy/Charger

As we just alluded to, if your toy originally came with the orange colored battery, it is possible (however, as stated above, not recommended) to replace it with the Power Wheels 12 volt battery 00801-0638 solid gray one. But is the opposite true? Can you upgrade from an All Gray version to one with the Orange Connector?

The answer is NO! Swapping a gray battery for the 40 amp fused orange battery is physically not possible.

I know this with the utmost of certainty as I pulled out my daughters old Barbie Jeep and tried connecting the toy to the 00801-1661 Power Wheels 12 volt battery. It would not slide in the hole! I then grabbed the two strikingly similar batteries and compared the connector. They were ever so slightly different!

Everything about the connector is the same except for a small change in the lower left and right corners. If you look close you will see a raised notch that prevents the squared connector from sliding in the hole. The black connector has no notch.

(Now before we go further you should be made aware that we have had customers in years past indicate they could use either battery. We never had reason to not believe this, but never took the time to verify this. We now know for certain that the current part number we carry in stock 00801-1661 does not work with the toys that originally came with 00801-0638, 00801-1460, and 00801-1869. This is not to say that the other orange battery part number, 00801-1776, does not follow this standard. The jury is still out.)

Some good news...

It does not matter which battery you have when it comes to charging. Both the 12V Quick Charger, part number 00801-1782, and the base model Power Wheels charger 00801-1778 can be used with both batteries for Power Wheels.

To sum up, STICK TO THE COLOR BATTERY THAT CAME WITH THE TOY. You will save yourself much frustration and be able to enjoy watching the kids play rather than have them underfoot crying and begging you to get the right battery.