Discovery #MINDBLOWN Model Engine Building Kit, DIY 4-Cylinder Combustion Engine, Working Pistons Fan Valves Belts LED Lights, STEM Mechanic Engineering Construction Experiment Set, Kids & Adults Gift

I got this for my niece as a gift for her 14th birthday. She absolutely loved it! It was challenging enough to keep her busy for about a week. The parts all worked as stated. It lights up and sparks as described. It is made of plastic, but is sturdy. She now has it displayed proudly in her room.

very easy for kids to work with and understand

Just finished putting this together with my 10 yo son. Took almost all day but we had other things this Sunday, so assembly time was about 3 hours. It was mostly fun with a few exceptions, and the end result is very impressive.A few notes.- It says for 8 year olds and older. There's no way an 8 yo can put this together. Or a 10 years old. Maybe a 12 years old, if they are very skilled. I had to do a lot of snapping, tightening screws, and checking to make sure this works in the end.- There's a step in the manual where it says "pay close attention to the direction of the crankshaft" but does not specify what exactly you need to look for. As a result 9 steps later I found that the timing belt cover wouldn't come into position and had to disassemble all the way back to step 5 to put the part the right way. Not fun.- The timing belt kept coming off. We found that after we put most of the mechanism together so we again had to backtrack 3 or 4 steps (you cannot put the belt back on since it's closed by a cover). The only way I managed to keep it on was to avoid using belt pulley, just put the belt on timing gear and timing wheel and it appears to stay on (we ran it for a few minutes and it hasn't come off yet).- There's no on/off switch. Not a big deal, you just put the connectors in or pull them out.- There seems to be much more screws then needed to complete the assembly, so THANK YOU!- It even has the head gasket which it doesn't have to (it's just a piece of paper) but gave me a chance to explain what it is.- The lights are supposed to indicate when the gasoline explodes in a cylinder, so I wanted to show my kids how the explosion happens when the piston is in the top of the cylinder. Unfortunately this is not the case in this model, the lights flash in 1-4-2-3 sequence but they are not synced with the rotation of the crankshaft. As far as I can see the camshaft is not synced with the crankshaft either so the valves open and close pretty much randomly (unless I missed something in the manual - or maybe misunderstand the concept?..).- It's driven by electric motor, and aligning the gears is tricky, we had to re-do it 3 times and a small piece broke off, and sometimes I hear one or two cogs skip.- The plastic is pretty fragile and you have to be very careful not to over-tighten the screws or it'll break.

I bought this so my kids (8 and 10) would have a basic understand of how an engine works and what the various parts we called. We spent about 2.5 hours building it and talking about what everything is and what it does. When we finally got the part where the timing belt get installed, it snapped instantly! "No problem" I thought, the model comes with a second one and we'll just use that and be a tad more careful this time. That worked, we finished up the model and let 'er rip! Everything worked great. The next morning, we went to plug the battery pack back in and the timing belt had broken overnight! On top of that, one of the connectors for the battery pack pulled out of the case when unplugged it. the Emailed the vendor, told them what happened and we had a complete replacement on our doorstep in no time at all.Honestly, it's a bummer when something new like that break instantly. Especially when you put bunch of work into it and more so when there are kids involved. However, the vendor responded to this situation VERY well and made things right immediately and that's a hard thing to find these days. On top of that, I got to teach the kids ANOTHER lesson out of this; you can get mad and leave horrid reviews of a product everytime something bad happens or something breaks, but in the end, you're probably still going to have a broken product.....or you can explain what happened and be a decent human about it and you stand a much better chance of getting what you need......and by the way, the new timing belt we received is still hanging in there!!!!!!

My son is obsessed with motors, fans, things that move, etc. so I bought this kit for him to put together and play with. We've had this kit for almost a year and he still plays with this (takes pieces off and puts them back on, tries the pieces in different spots to see what will happen, pretends to fix it like he's seen my dad do, etc.). He was 4 y/o when I bought this and he did need hand over hand help putting it together the first time. With practice, he's now capable of taking off most pieces and putting them back on himself.As long as your child knows how to use a screwdriver, can handle small pieces, and knows how to read instructions, they will be able to put this together without help. Once its assembled, I would say its appropriate for kids 3 y/o and older so long as they know NOT to put small items in their mouths.