The LEGO Technic 42111 Fast & Furious Dom’s Dodge Charger set received a rather good review here at TLCB when we got our hands on it. Certainly a better one than movies did. But, like those awful awful movies, could there be sequel; one that’s even faster and furiouser?

Well no, neither of those adjectives. But we do have a 42111 sequel that’s more sparkly.

That’s because we’ve outfitted our 42111 Dom’s Dodge Charger set with an array of LED lights courtesy of suppliers Lightailing, who have a huge range of LEGO compatible light kits available for sets including Creator, Modular Buildings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, City, and – as here – Technic.

Our 42111-compatible kit is produced by BriksMax, and it came in a neat box containing an instructions booklet, a 1 Year warranty card, a remote control, a battery box, and an alarming number of resealable bags.

Said bags were numbered and described, corresponding to the relevant point in the instructions denoting when to open each one. Inside each was a well-coiled set of wires, tiny circuit boards, sticky pads, or a combination of these.

So is adding the BriksMax light kit to your 42111 Dom’s Dodge Charger set fun? Absolutely not. Fiddly – yes. Fun – no.

Despite the instructions being reasonable, the installation process is effectively threading needle around two hundred times. It makes us wonder if these LED lighting kit companies could design a little attachment that clips into Technic holes and holds the wire, removing the need to endlessly thread LEDs through Technic beams and making the instructions simpler to boot (you can have that recommendation for free Lighting People!)

The process is made harder by the wires being black and in this case the model being black too, although the BriksMax kit does sometimes differentiate between wire types via coloured band, plus each LED has the bag no. printed on its reverse, which is a thoughtful touch.

Only a few parts of the set need to be disassembled to install the LEDs, and only two pieces are replaced (the front indicator bricks switching from tiles to studs to give more room for the LED inside).

Overall though, the installation process is not fun one bit. However, the end result is, well… fantastic.

We’d resigned ourselves to the fact that we’d probably have wired something up incorrectly and switching on the kit via the remote for the first time would cause the indicators to flash diagonally or something, but no! It all worked. And it worked beautifully.

The BriksMax kit allows you to light up the interior, head and tail lights, and left and right indicators all separately, with the LEDs (and wires for that matter) all well hidden within the model.

Like previously reviewed third-party lighting products, installing the BriksMax kit does mean that the LEGO bricks don’t quite fit together was tightly as they did before, but – at least in the case of Dom’s Dodge Charger – the effect is minimal.

A bigger issue is the finding a place for the battery box, but we shoved that behind the seats and – being black – it isn’t too noticeable.

Verdict

Despite the very un-fun (albeit reasonably well thought-out) installation, the end result of the BriksMax 42111 light kit is excellent. The wires feel of fairly good quality, the LEDs shine brightly, and the remote makes the model really playable.

It’s here where we think the kit really comes into its own, as you could buy this BriksMax kit to bring pre-programmed LED lights to your own MOCs (as long as they’re a similar size to the 42111 set), and the results could well be fantastic.

Used as intended by its maker; being fitted to the Technic 42111 Fast & Furious Dom’s Dodge Charger, the BriksMax kit has indeed brought a worthwhile enhancement to the official LEGO set.

A worthwhile sequel? Sure is.

★★★★

Check out the BriksMax light kit for 42111 Dom’s Dodge Charger at Lightailing here.

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