Smithsonian Motor Works Model Engine with plastic case

Great Kit. Highly suggest that adult lead in the building/deciphering of instructions. Instructions sometimes unclear. A Hotline number is given and the help given there is Super! I lost a piece and they sent me the replacement. Finished product is an excellent internal combustion engine demo!

This motor works engine kit kept my 9 year old engrossed for hours at a time when he was building it. Very cool plus he learned a lot. Discover This is a great store.

My 9 year old put this together in a couple of days with his dad. It was a great project for the two of them. An adult is required as we found you had to use an exacto knife or box cutter to smooth out some of the plastic edges after taking them off the plastic form. My son loves it and is taking it to show and tell at school. Excellent product,clear instructions,and a great learning opportunity.

I bought this kit in school for an auto tech assignment and i love it. i agree with the others that the directions are unclear but the pics can help you with it. the screws dont fit well but my screws didnt srip but the screw driver did. the kit does not need a exacto or a box citter just some sand paper. WHEN YOU PUT EACH PEICE TOGETHER BE SURE IT WORKS or you engine will lock up. i reccomend a little vasaline in on the pistons and in the engine block and it will work smooth. the engine is not super fast but fast enough to see what the engine is doing. this a great kit and is worth buying.

We started out a little bit frustrated because the directions were missing several pages and we were missing one small piece. But,the customer service response was outstanding - they quickly gave us everything that we needed and they were a real pleasure to deal with. Then we got started,and my 8-year-old son and I had a great time working together building the engine. It was a great experience for both of us and we plan to use Smithonian's products to do more projects like this in the future.

I bought this kit for our four 8 to 10 year old grandchildren a year ago for Christmas 2007 with the intention of building it with them as a teaching opportunity and a learning experience. Instead it proved to be a study in frustration for several reasons,the three biggest being:rn1. The kit's many parts are held together by MANY screws. However the screws provided were all too large in diameter for the screw holes cast into the model,demanding that each hole be carefully reamed out with an electric drill in order for the screws to go in without stripping. The plastic is so hard that even a tiny misjudgment results in either the holes being reamed oversize and the screws no longer gripping or undersize and the screw heads getting stripped trying to screw them in.rn2. the instructions were unclear at several critical points. The cam shaft and rocker arm assembly instructions were particularly poor.rn3. the screw driver provided was a joke and quickly began slipping and stripped out screw heads until I replaced it with a proper one,though even then,without reaming,the screw heads would strip before the screws would go in.rn There were other smaller disappointments but the screw problem reduced a great idea into a study in frustration and disappointment. It's a shame and Discover This should be more honest in their product descriptions because I will forever hold their product descriptions suspect in the future.rn Billrnrn

My 10 year old son and I put this together in just three days,working a few hours a day. If you take your time,make sure of what to do on each step,and are careful with the screws that hold it together,then its a breeze to build. My son learned a lot about how engines work and its a very impressive model when you're finished. All the engine parts move like a real engine and the spark plugs even fire when they are supposed to! Highly reccommended for a father/son project.

This is a great product. I loved building it. It really looks like a real engine. I bought it 5 months ago and i still love to take it apart and rebuild it. I love it