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New Crestview club teaching students about small engines

Larry Eckert (middle), a teacher at Crestview Middle School, helps students Colin Betterly (left) and Jackson Lunsford reassemble a four-stroke lawnmower engine in the school’s Small Engine Club on Tuesday, Nov. 11. Eckert started the club this school year.
Larry Eckert (middle), a teacher at Crestview Middle School, helps students Colin Betterly (left) and Jackson Lunsford reassemble a four-stroke lawnmower engine in the school’s Small Engine Club on Tuesday, Nov. 11. Eckert started the club this school year. Photo by Steve Clark.

Originally published Nov. 17, 2014.

Larry Eckert hopes his Small Engine Club propels students much like the engines they study.

A new club at Crestview Middle School this year, members have had a chance to get their hands on small engines and learn how they work. Eckert, who teaches technology education at the school, liked that Riverview Middle School offered a Technology Club, which gives students the opportunity to repair things around the school, discovering how they function as a result.

Eckert wanted to provide a similar club at Crestview. Upon discovering that Riverview’s club had six lawnmower engines in its possession that it wasn’t using, he acquired them and made them the basis for his club. After buying Craftsman socket sets and other tools, Eckert was ready to kick things off.

Club meetings commenced about a month after school started, Eckert says. The club, which meets on Tuesdays after school in Eckert’s classroom, attracted a fairly diverse group, with three eighth-graders and five sixth-graders – six boys and two girls – filling out the club’s ranks.

The club’s six engines are four-stroke models. In these models, the piston’s thermodynamic cycle spans four stages. Three of the engines contain a horizontal shaft while the other three feature a vertical configuration, which are the ones Eckert has the club studying.

The club was split into three groups, with each receiving an engine. After disassembling the engines, the groups studied all the components. Currently, Eckert has the groups putting the engines back together.

Club members haven’t learned just via hands-on experience, but have also used the computers in Eckert’s classroom for research.

“We’ve used YouTube to look up stuff,” notes Eckert, who says videos on the disassembly and reassembly of certain engine components have been helpful.

Of the club’s members, Eckert says only one had a fair amount of prior experience working on engines.

For the majority of the club, studying an engine has been a completely new experience.

And, Eckert hopes, an impactful one.

“Hopefully it ignites an interest and they’ll continue this in high school,” he says. “Somebody might take the automotive class at the high school because of it.”

Ultimately, Eckert believes the club compliments classes at Huntington North and will position students to shine in them.

“They have an engines class up there where they also do small engines and their guy is pretty good at it,” he says. “If you have somebody that may have a problem, you can take it in and the kids and him will work it out and you just pay them a little bit for the parts that they did and a little bit extra and they’ll fix it for you to where you don’t take it in somewhere else.

“And they do the same thing with cars. They’ve got a pretty nice set-up up there for that kind of stuff.”

Club member Jackson Lunsford has enjoyed acquiring skills that will enable him to assist family members or people he knows with basic mechanical issues.

“I’ve always liked helping people,” says the sixth-grader.

Jacob Haneline, one of the club’s eighth-graders and also its most-experienced member around engines, has made a habit out of imparting his knowledge to the group.

“That’s one part I enjoy about it, helping the other kids,” he says.

Despite Haneline’s comfort around engines, which he’s developed through motocross racing and working on his bike, he’s learned plenty from the club himself.

“My problem was that I’m not good at labeling the parts,” he admits. “But I can take (an engine) apart and put it together with ease.

“So, I did this class and I’ve learned all the parts now.”

Once the groups finish reassembling their motors, the club will conclude for its current batch of students, Eckert says.

“A couple more weeks, this group will be done and we’ll start another one after Christmas,” he states.

Eckert hopes the next group is even bigger and notes that he’d even be willing to expand the club to more than one day a week to accommodate.
Something he isn’t willing to do, however, is have club members attempt to fix actual engines, or at least things around the school, as Principal Chuck Werth suggested at the club’s inception.

“We’re not guaranteeing anything,” chuckles Eckert.