How do pullback motors in toys work? They are common in toys, esp.
cars and airplanes.(Please include diagram and description, if
possible.)

I am happy to answer your question, I hope this response gives you
enough information.

"Roll-Back Car.  This toy is powered by a spring that is wound when
the car is pulled backwards.  As an example of Newton's Third law,
pull the car back (action), then release it and the car goes forward
(reaction). "

http://www.bsu.edu/classes/watson2/p101/unit10.htm

"Pull-back Car 
Vineet Khare, Shikhar Maini, Shahnawaz Faiyaz 
When this toy car is pulled back a few inches, it travels right across
the room. The energy must be stored quickly but released slowly. This
is achieved using two different gear trains in the same tiny gearbox -
when pulled back, the spring tightens fifteen times faster than when
it unwinds. The innovation lies in two floating gears - the axes of
gears 2 and 4 move along two slots in the gearcage depending on the
tangential forces acting on them. Explore the details of this
ingenuous mechanism."
http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~amit/courses/371/index.html

The nitty gritty of the mechanism
http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~amit/courses/371/khare/mechanism.html

Here is an Indian university course explaining how to make the car and the motor.

http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~amit/courses/371/khare/index.html

This course outlines

INTRODUCTION

STRUCTURE--COMPONENTS

MATERIAL USED IN COMPONENTS

WORKING MECHANISM

GEAR RATIOS

IMPROVEMENT IN DESIGN

I feel this answers your question adequately as I too now know how one
of these motors works.

Any questions leave me a comment.

--Keystroke-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by keystroke-ga on 30 Jul 2006 16:32 PDT

Search terms
pull back motor toys
pull back toy engines how do work
pull back toy engines

--Keystroke-ga

Wow! Great answer! I'm doing a project for school and this is very
helpful. Sorry I took so long to respond, but I was expecting an
email...I didn't even know the answer was here and stumbled across it
by accident.

A pic is worth a thousand words. An experience is worth a million. 

Start by searching www.kelvin.com for #281907. Follow up by buying it.
Finish by taking apart a few toy cars. It will be more than worth it.

Thank you very much for the five stars, kind words and generous
tipping! Email notifications would be helpful for Google Answers, but
apparently they've been broken for awhile.

Come back and ask us any other questions you may have! :)