My son [18yr] never had any interest in mechanics like motorbike or car engines, always yawning if I brought the subject up.

Today he came to me telling about his new game : virtual reality to build an engine. I must say, it really beats the Haynes Manuals from my age !

So all interested, who want to know -litterally- how an engine pieces together, have a look !

BTW you can play it without the VR-headset, just from your monitor :

 

No Fair if it allows you to see INSIDE the engine you have built up. For us old-school shadetree mechanics, the validation of proper procedures occurred at start up!

I'm going to gift the game to my video-game addicted 12 yr old grandson, though..

 

Great ! But keep in mind you might have to get him a scrapyard V8, a toolkit, some weeks of your spare time,
and a bodyshell to fit the engine to once he is 16...

An excellent prospect, well worth investing in the game for !

 

VR seems to be a popular new technology but I would only worry that the gaming technology may be more enticing to the youngsters than the manual craft that is being simulated. I enjoy restoring old cars partly because that's how I got my first car. When I was 15, dad trailered home a wrecked car with a blown engine and said, and I remember the quote clearly: "Son, if you can fix it, you can drive it." If I were POTUS like Trump, I'd make that the law of the land. But even if I'd never picked up a wrench again after that first car, I learned enough about how a car works that it'd be unlikely any mechanic or dealer service adviser could ever take advantage of me, plus even tho as a teenager I was invincible, I drove my first car like a grandma for fear I might scratch my brand new paint job that I'd worked so hard for.

Now when I finish a car, I enjoy going to car shows. I remember taking my 69 Corvette to a parking lot Corvette club show at a local shopping mall. A mother and daughter were wandering through. The little girl probably about 6 or 7 years old seemed fascinated with the older Corvettes and she wanted to sit in my car so I let her while her mom snapped a picture. That made her day. She'd be about old enough now to be enrolling in Wyotech or something and I've always wondered if that was enough of a spark. But the most fun was a couple years ago I had just assembled a rolling chassis for a 72 Corvette with the engine, transmission, differential, brakes, etc. so before I dropped the body back on, I loaded it up on the trailer and took it to a couple of car shows. It was the biggest hit ever as all the fathers and grandfathers brought dozens of kids to point out all the different parts of the car and explain how they worked. You can only see so much through an open hood so that was a great opportunity to see all the systems connected together, and relatively basic stuff from 1972.

For some reason, the gearhead gene often skips a generation so I hope that I've helped to switch on a few dormant mechanical aptitude base pairs. I'm sure a game is great, but it surely can't beat the real thing so y'all get out there and share the toys.

 

My dad's father was a petrolhead. Owned a MG TF and a Lotus Europa. My dad couldn't care less. As long as it moves and it works, no problem.

I got about a car like you did, kind of. My dad let me pickout a used car on a budget, he paid insurance and all, as long as I would stay away from motorcycles,
since we have a lot of rain and snow and skiddy weather in general, I now see as a parent why they did this.

This car was a Triumph Dolemite Sprint [ old-maid-special, for most brittish..]. The car was sh#t brown, conveniently, so you wouldn't see the rust.
The car was then only 3 years old but needed an almost compleet rebuild with 68000kms on the clock. So I didn't even have my license yet [18yr then in NL].
So in the garage, with 40cm's on both sides to work, I took the engine out and gearbox [ ropes and pulley's , really dangerous to do 'single handed' thinking back].

Anyway, almost a year later I was driving it and the only thing left [ I didn't have the cash to buy more parts] where the rear shocks. So my dad said to get it fixed,
winter coming, he'd chip in. On the way home from uni I collided with a truck driven by an Iraqian military with no valid license. He came from the opposite direction,
preselected to turn off, and I slowed down. But he pulled away when I as too close to stop. Could not steer away due to an other truck oncoming and school kids
with bikes on both sides waiting to cross. So I hid the rear tires at about 70kmh, the rear of the car came off the ground while the front crumbled and I closed my
eyes... ..looked second laters, straight down on where a trailer hitches on normally, thinking I'd end upside down whith the car on top off me and me squashed
between it and the hitchplate. But the car fell back on its rear wheels luckily. Then it bounced back from the springs. No aribags then , but my stuffed toy lion
from the parcelshelf landed on the steering wheel before my head hit it... ..how much luck can one have !

I ended up breaking even. They could not leave the country due to the accident and the Iran/Iraq war was about to start. In the end the guy selling the truck
pretended to have been driving [otherwise not insured], so I got my money. Lost all my hard work. Decided never to work on a car again..

But I did. But not huge projects anymore. My parents still live in the same house, and the paint from me spraying the car is still on the walls almost 40yrs later..

My son is crazy about cars like me, so it doesn't have to skip a generation at all !