Haynes Build Your Own Internal Combustion Engine

I picked this item up to build with my son once he went over (and was fascinated by) the basic four stroke internal combustion engine in his elementary school science course.The kit went together smoothly with nothing but the screwdriver included in the kit, a pair of hobby tin snips, ant a hobby file. It took about four hours to put together (much was which was spent discussing the details with the boy; if you're building by yourself, it should go faster). Once completed, it operated quite smoothly.Pros:- Decent price (most model engines seem to cost quite a bit more).- Ease of assembly (part fit)- Type of assembly (all press fit or screws)- Cycle animation is first rate (I particularly like that it uses an encoder as a distributor and "fires" its "spark plugs" at each power stroke)Cons:- There are a few locations where the sprue flashing on the plastic parts must be carefully removed of it will interfere with the motion of the model. (It's nothing you won't do anyway if you've built a few models like this before.)- There's a bit of slop in the camshaft assembly. It's not really enough to be a significant problem with timing, but it's there.- The idler pulley for the timing belt is not on the part sprue shown in the assembly manual (at least for the generation of kit I received). It is still in the kit, just on a different sprue. I suspect they changed two of the injection tools they use to make the parts, moved which parts tree it's on, and missed updating the instruction book. It's not a big issue, just be aware.Overall, it's a fantastic kit. I really love that it uses grain of wheat light bulbs as "spark plugs" to show when the spark plugs would fire in the cycle. Normally, I'd knock it down to four stars for the instruction booklet error, but it simply runs so well it rates all five.

This was a pretty fun kit to put together. It also looks allot better than the older generation of this kit which used to be in orange and purple colors (yuk) the new up to date version has parts in more professional looking chrome, black and silver parts with clear parts for the main engine block. It's also cheaper and easier to assemble then the visible V8. What I enjoy about this kit is it doesn't need glue, most of the parts are put together with screws and it uses an electric motor to turn the moving parts and has light up spark plugs which the visible V8 doesn't have. I do wish there was an on/off switch on the battery pack so you don't have to unplug it from the engine when your done using it. I might just build an on/off switch myself. This kit is basic when compared to the V8 but it still looks cool on my desk. I am having some trouble getting it to rotate continuously because it keeps seizing up and it makes a loud clicking noise. It could be something's not properly lined up with the gears so it should be an easy fix. The spark plugs light up properly with no signs of malfunction. (Be sure to test the motor the other electronics before assembling)

The media could not be loaded. Delightful working model. Great for science fair project. Includes lights showing when spark plugs are firing. It has a single button to run it for about 30 seconds. It took my 14 year old about two hours to assemble.

Bought item as gift for my 7 year old grandson...he had it put together quickly. Now he's taken his father's Ferrari 308 GTS engine apart and pieces scattered all over the garage...what have I done! All kidding aside, the gift was very well received!

I think I remember seeing some good and bad comments on this, but just wanted to say that we got this for our 9 year old son for Christmas, and we had a blast putting it together. He has shown some interest in cars and so we thought he'd like it - he did. He has now taken pictures and videos of it, and wants to take it to school to show his class. A few things: I saw different versions of this, Haynes, Smithsonian. Didn't know the difference, but we went with the Haynes and it worked well. The instructions and book do a great job of explaining how a motor works. I saw a few comments that they put this together and it didn't work, so two words of advice. First, use a real screw driver, not the tiny one that comes with the set. Also, the pistons have to move freely in the block, but we're talking about plastic molded parts here. One of our pistons didn't want to move too well, so I put a TINY bit of superglue to hold it together, and it worked better. Also, there is a brief mention of using some vegetable oil in the block to lubricate the pistons, we didn't do that because we didn't read it until after the block was assembled. Ours is working fine, but don't miss that part at the very beginning. We had to use a bit of superglue to hold down the two piece top part of the block as well, because one piece of plastic was bowed enough that it would not stay quite in place to allow the the spring loaded firing pins move freely at the one end - a touch of superglue removed the bowing of the plastic and allowed that pin to work with the rocker, and it was fine. This took us about 3 hours, but wasn't difficult, and we really had fun putting it together.