Watching This Lego Motor Blow Up At High RPMs Is Oddly Satisfying

LEGO’s Technic series is actually a pretty cool setup. It has all kinds of mechanical parts that range from gears to levers to pistons and crankshafts. The sets are perfect for gearheads who want to tinker with something.

The guys in this video decided to build a few model engines and spin them up with an electric motor to see just how much stress they can handle before blowing apart. It starts out with a replica of a Honda four cylinder, attached to the motor and given a little nudge to get started. The engine looks amazingly lifelike, considering everything is made from plastic and is incredibly small. The revs slowly increase as the tiny pistons pump faster inside the small plastic cylinders. It’s always cool to see how things look when camera frame rates cause them to speed up and slow down, as the pistons seemingly stand still at different points in the video despite clearly still spinning incredibly high.

Although we don’t know exactly what RPM this thing is turning, it’s obviously getting up there when everything lets go, causing pistons and other small engine pieces go flying in all directions.

Then, the guys double up on the piston count, building a replica V8 and put it through the same test. It’s something to see!