Product review for Solar Car Kit, Skill Level II Please read our review guidelines and see the terms of use of posting a review. Overall Rating: and share your thoughts with other customers Sort Reviews: Newest | Oldest | Highest Rating | Lowest Rating   :: Viewing page 1 of 1  -  Thursday, November 08, 2007 this brought together enemies Reviewed By: alex (austin, texas) so me and my newly found friend did thid as a thing to do together so we can become friends(we were enemies). and it worked really well. YAY!  -  Tuesday, May 29, 2007 Fun Educational Toy Reviewed By: InventorSpot.com (Las Vegas, Nevada) The ki includes just about everything you need to build a very basic toy car, about a foot long, that can run off of either solar or battery power, It does not nclude a AA battery. It has a simple mechanism for switching gears from high speed to low speed. The instructions are very clear, and assembly took about 45 minutes. Most of it snaps together. The assembly requires some use of tools. There is some stripping of small wires and threading of those wires through some pretty tiny holes, so bigger hands and shorter patience may become frustrated. But generally speaking, it's a pretty easy assembly. I had two small problems with the kit. First, even though it claims you can assemble it in a couple of different configurations, you pretty much need to decide which configuration you want before you build anything. Many of the pieces are stuck together using heavy-duty double-sided tape, so it's not exactly easy to pull it apart to reconfigure it. My second problem was that, even though the box shows a shiny silver body, the shell is actually clear. If you want to paint it, you need to do that first. Once it's finished, the car is a great introduction to solar power and basic switching. Bring the car outside, switch it to solar power, tilt the solar cell toward the sun, and off you go. The instructions do come with an explanation of how solar power works, but unless you're really interested in the science of it all, it quickly induces glassy-eyed stares. The end result is that I learned something about solar technology. I only wish the car was more easily disassembled, as I'm curious to see how the solar cell would power other AA battery devices. Overall a fun weekend afternoon project...if it's sunny!

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