This past Saturday (Nov. 3) I heard a woman call in asking about whether it was safe for her children to play with an old car engine. Instead of risking various injuries, I hope she sees this link for a really cool-looking Toy Car Engine! This sounds perfect for her kids! The description says, “It’s every little gearhead’s dream come true: a hard-to-find car engine built for tinkering. Pop open the cherry red hood, check the oil, change a tire, even rebuild the motor. Includes all car parts and three tools, plus working headlights, horn and engine sounds. Ages 3+”
The toy is great and appropriate for the 3 year old in the picture but for an 11 year old future gear head a real engine would be in order. An old lawn mower might be a good start.
When I was that age I built Visable V8 and Slant 6 models…in addition to running a go kart.
The below link shows some current model engine offerings. These would be age appropriate for an 11 year old. http://www.usahobby.com/science/engine.php
This may be difficult to believe. In this day and age I mean. But when I was a scout – years ago of course – I think I was what is called an Explorer Scout, a teenage scout so to speak, of driving age (almost) – the scoutmaster, he up and gave the troop an old car to work on. It was a real beater. A jalopy. If you looked up “jalopy” in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of this car. Anyway, we got it running eventually, but there was a fuel pump problem , so to make it work we had to remove the gas tank and hold it up in the air. So the gas would drain to the carb by gravity. The fuel tank had to be higher than the carb. So we’d put three scouts in the back seat who’d hold the fuel tank on their laps! Then one scout would drive around the neighborhood with the scout leader in the passenger seat beaming with pride his scouts got the car running. I’m surprised the scout leader didn’t get arrested! I mean, 3 teenage scouts holding the fuel tank full of gasoline in their laps! lol