Category Archives: Technic

Pumping on Your Stereo

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We’re not sure who even uses the word ‘stereo’ any more. Meaning a sound coming from two places, Liebherr have applied it to their L518 wheel loader because – weirdly – it has two steering mechanisms.

Cleverly combining both a steered rear axle and an articulated centre pivot, the L518 Stereo can swivel about in small spaces like a pair of Elves on a hoverboard.

This neat Technic recreation of the L518 Stereo comes from Jundis of Eurobricks, who has replicated not only the cunning ‘stereo’ steering but also a mechanically controlled arm with an interchangeable fork/bucket, pendular rear suspension, and a working piston engine.

It’s the kind of good old-fashioned mechanical engineering that we love, and there’s more to see of Jundis’ Liebherr L518 wheel loader at the Eurobricks forum. Click the link above to pump on your stereo.

*Today’s title song. Obviously.

My Other Car’s a Jeep

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LEGO’s 42122 Technic Jeep Wrangler Rubicon set seems to have only been on sale for about fifteen minutes, yet already the online Lego Community are successfully repurposing its pieces in new and interesting ways. Which is exactly what Lego building should be about! This 42122 alternate comes from Dyen’s Creations of Flickr, and there’s more to see of this excellent B-Model quad bike via the link above.

The Pusher

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This TLCB Writer’s peaceful afternoon watching Top Gear re-runs working hard to keep TLCB wheels in motion was unwelcomely disturbed today. Disturbed by the unusual sound of distant Elven screaming, getting increasingly louder, before fading away again, only to be repeated a few minutes later.

Sigh. Whatever was going on it probably wasn’t good. A trudge out to the corridor revealed the cause; a rather unique vehicle, powerfully pushing a cohort of several enraged Elves up and down the halls of TLCB Towers with a large blade.

Upon seeing a ‘hoomun’ arrive to interrupt the fun, the Elf at the controls raised the blade so its colleagues passed underneath it, only for them to be squashed not once but twice by the following tracks, whereupon the delighted perpetrator promptly abandoned the controls and ran off.

Order restored we can take a look at the vehicular cause, a fully remote controlled Technic ‘Snow Dozer’ by Kirill Mazurov (aka desert752), powered by no less than thirteen Power Functions motors.

Eight of these drive the tracks, with two more powering the articulated steering, another two the rear crane, and the last the blade elevation used so effectively by the Elf that found it. A pair of third-party BuWizz bluetooth batteries provide the power (eight times as much as LEGO’s own system) and control mechanism, allowing Kirill’s machine to both push an impressive quantity of snow (or TLCB Elves) and to travel far faster than it has any right to.

There’s much more of Kirill’s strange yet spectacular creation to see at both his ‘Technic Snow Dozer’ Flickr album and via the Eurobricks discussion forum, plus you can watch it in action in the snow via the video below.

YouTube Video:

*Today’s wonderful title song. Which could be about a different kind of snow.

I Owe You a 10 Second Car

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‘The Fast & The Furious’ has a lot to answer for. Terrible dialogue, questionable physics, and finding a way (any way*) to keep characters going throughout the series (however absurd) are standard action-movie faux-pas, but the film franchise has had a larger and more irritating impact on the minds of internet commenters.

What? The new Supra doesn’t have a 2JZ? Not a Supra! What? The new Supra doesn’t have 1,000bhp from the factory? Not a Supra! What? The new Supra shares parts with BMW? Not a Supra!

OK internet commenters, here goes; The A80 Supra is not the fastest most awesomest car ever made. It was fairly fat cruiser for fairly fat people, with an engine that you could also get in a Toyota station wagon. Putting ‘NOS’ in it won’t give it 1,000bhp, and to get that power you’d need the world’s laggiest single-shot turbo, making the car borderline undrivable on the street.

Right, now that’s cleared up, here’s the fastest most awesomest car ever made, with ‘NOS’ and 1,000bhp.

Brian O’Conner’s modified A80 Toyota Supra Targa has become possibly the most revered movie car of all time, setting the stage for a dozen mostly terrible ‘Fast & Furious’ sequels, blasting fourth-generation Supra values into the stratosphere, and creating an unsurmountable barrier of hype for any future cars wearing the nameplate.

This glorious recreation of O’Conner’s A80 Supra brings the iconic movie car to life in full ‘Technic Supercar’ specification, with working suspension, gearbox, steering, and a replica 2JZ engine.

More importantly builder spiderbrick has faithfully replicated the slightly weird livery, bodykit, roll cage, nitrous system, and huge rear wing found on the movie car to such perfection that we can almost hear Dominic Toretto breathing the word ‘family‘ for the six-hundredth time for no discernible reason.

There’s loads more of Spider’s ‘The Fast & the Furious’ Toyota Supra A80 to see at his Brickshelf album, including a link to a video showing the model’s features, plus engine and chassis images. Click the link above to live your life a 1/4 mile at a time…

*Bad guy turns good? Check. Back from the dead? Check. Bad guy turns good again? Check.

Koenigsegg Jesko | Picture Special

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A new supercar company seems to start every week, announcing something with a million horsepower and a top speed of 400mph, before immediately going into liquidation never having built a thing. However there is one exception; Koenigsegg.

Now twenty years old, Koenigsegg have built some of the most exciting hypercars of the modern era, including this, the 1,300bhp Jesko.

This spectacular Technic replica of the Koenigsegg Jesko comes from Pvdb of Eurobricks, and – like the real world car – it’s one of the finest examples of its class.

The beautifully replicated bodywork includes Koenigsegg’s patented dyhedral doors that swivel skywards to open, opening rear clamshell and front trunk, and an adjustable rear wing.

Pvdb’s creation also features the Jesko’s unique front and rear ‘triplex’ (three damper) suspension, along with Hand of God steering, and a mid-mounted piston engine hooked up to an six-speed (plus natural and reverse) sequential paddle shift gearbox, operated via levers in the cabin.

It’s all superbly executed and demonstrates how real a Technic supercar can get if – as in this case – you spend over a year refining the engineering.

There are more images of Pvdb’s incredible Technic Koenigsegg Jesko to see at the Eurobricks forum, where you can join the discussion and await the upcoming video that’s currently in progress. Click on the link above to make the jump to one of the best Technic supercars of 2021 so far.

Snow Beast

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Febrovery’s barrage of sci-fi has ceased, allowing our Elves to change gears. The first to return to TLCB Towers duly took no notice of this whatsoever though, and brought back a sci-fi truck. Still, at least some Elves got run over…

Yes this hefty-looking ‘Snow Beast’ by Flickr’s Bongobert is fully remote controlled, with its pendular-suspended axles driven by Power Functions motors hidden within. The Elf at the controls of course used this feature to smush some colleagues into the office carpet, as has become customary.

Whilst we get the carpet cleaner out you can head out onto the frozen wastes of Hibernia via Bongobert’s photostream, and we’ll be back soon with a car. Yes really.

In a Car Built For Two

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The Smart Fortwo is brilliant.

The result of an unlikely collaboration between Mercedes-Benz and watch-maker Swatch, the original Fortwo launched in the late 1990s and it was a triumph of packaging. A little turbocharged three-cylinder was mounted under the boot floor, the ingenious Tridion safety cell was a visible part of the car’s exterior, and it was short enough that you could park end-on to the curb. It even qualified for Kei car status in Japan.

The Fortwo quickly became the must-have European fashion accessory, before – as with all must-have fashion accessories – becoming yesterday’s news. Sales dwindled, as European consumers decided to copy America for some reason and discerned that enormous SUVs are actually the most appropriate vehicle for crowded city streets. We’re genuinely worried for the future of humanity sometimes…

There are a few cities (such as Rome) where Smart Fortwos are literally everywhere, but these days the car only lives on as a small-selling EV, which everyone ignores from behind the wheel of enormous SUVs.

This neat Technic recreation of the second generation Fortwo comes from Matthew Terentev (aka osterum), and it’s packed with clever functionality. There’s working front and rear suspension, steering via both HOG and the (fur-wrapped) steering wheel, a three-cylinder piston engine hooked up the rear wheels, opening doors, and even a fold-flat passenger seat as per the real car.

There’s loads more of Matthew’s Technic Fortwo to see at both Flickr and Eurobricks – click the links above to take a look, whilst we ponder a car that should have transformed urban driving, if only we’d all been Smart enough to realise it.

Synthing Through the Snow

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The snow around TLCB Towers is melting away, however TLCB Master MOCer Mahjqa appears to still be enjoying it wherever he is, with the most accurately titled video on YouTube. ‘Lego truck driving through snow whilst synth music plays’ is available to view above, or at Eurobricks here.

Bobcat

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We don’t get bobcats here in TLCB’s home nation. We used to have the eurasian lynx roaming about, which is like a bobcat only three times the size, but we shot all of those. Along with pretty much everything else. Yay humanity.

Thus the only bobcats we’re going to see are the excavatorial types, such as this Bobcat S130. Constructed by Brick_Builder19, this neat Technic recreation of the skid-steer loader includes a working piston engine, a linear actuator operated lift arm, and a mechanical tipping bucket.

Full details of Brick’s Bobcat S130 are available on Eurobricks, where you can also find a link to the model on LEGO Ideas. Grab your gun and click the link above to take a closer look.

Raucous Rieju

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Ninety-five year old Spanish motorcycle manufacturer Rieju make some great looking off-road mopeds. And so too does previous bloggee Mathjis Bongers, who has recreated their MRT PRO ‘motard’ in Technic form, complete with working suspension, steering, and a replica of the Rieju’s tiny 50cc engine, which likely makes a disproportionately loud noise in relation to the forward movement in provides. Mathjis’ version is therefore our preference, despite how cool the real thing looks, and there’s more to see at both his ‘Rieju MRT PRO‘ album and via the Eurobricks discussion here.

My Other Car’s a Jeep

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LEGO’s new Technic 42122 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon looks cool, although on close inspection not all that accurate, but is something of a disappointment technically. It does include plenty of decent parts though.

M_longer of Eurobricks has used every single one of them in the creation of his 42122 B-Model, turning the Wrangler into a trophy truck complete with working steering, pendular front and trailing-arm rear suspension, opening doors, and even a pair of jerry cans for longer off-road excursions.

Building instructions are available and there’s more of M_longer’s 42122 alternate to see at the Eurobricks discussion forum.

Giant Vibrator

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Get your minds out of the gutter. This is a Vibroseis Tracked Vehicle, designed to send shock waves through the ground to map rock density for the oil and gas industry, and it is – in effect – a giant vibrator.

This intriguing Technic recreation of one of the world’s more unusual vehicles comes from Master MOcer and multiple previous bloggee Nicco71, who has built it using only parts from the 42100 Technic Leibherr R 9800 excavator set.

The three repurposed XL Motors drive both sets of tracks plus the piston engine mounted in the rear section, whilst the set’s four L Motors power the winch, the articulated steering, the vibrator height, and the vibrating action.

There’s loads more to see of this remarkable creation at Nico71’s website by clicking here – where building instructions can also be found so you can use this giant vibrator for yourself at home – plus you can watch it in action in the only safe-for-work vibrator footage on the internet via the video below.

YouTube Video

My Other Car’s a Bugatti

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Bugatti’s Chiron probably shares more than a few parts with the Audi R8, what with both of them coming from the Volkswagen Empire. In fact we wouldn’t be surprised if the Chiron and the R8 share the odd part with a Skoda too, but that’s probably kept quiet…

Michal Wolski (aka Porsche96) has gone considerably further though, building his Audi R8 only from parts found within the 42083 Technic Bugatti Chiron set.

Michal’s alternate is just as features-packed as the donor set too, with all-wheel-suspension, a working V10 engine hooked up to a 4-speed sequential gearbox, steering by both the wheel and ‘Hand of God’, and a functioning convertible roof.

Full build details and a link to building instructions can be found at the Eurobricks forum, whist a complete gallery of images is available to view via both Bricksafe and Flickr. Click the links to take a closer look at Michal’s Bugatti-based R8, and if you’re feeling inspired we’d like to see a Chiron-based Skoda!

Forbidden Flatness

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Porsche are perhaps the best known manufacturer to use flat engines, despite the fact that these days most of their cars are powered by Volkswagen Group Vs or Inlines. However Ferrari too once powered their cars by boxer engines, the first of which was this; the Berlinetta Boxer.

Ferrari’s first mid-engined twelve-cylinder road car, just over two-thousand Berlinetta Boxers were produced between 1973 and ’84 before the Testarossa picked up the flat-twelve mantle, although none were officially imported into the Unites States as Enzo Ferrari thought the flat-twelve was too much for U.S. 55mph speed limits and increasing emissions regulations.

This excellent Technic recreation of the ‘BB’ comes from previous bloggee and TLCB Competition Winner  James Tillson, whose model includes working suspension, steering, pop-up headlights, plus opening doors and rear clamshell, under which is – of course – a functioning 12-cylinder piston engine.

There’s much more of James’ superb Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer to see at his photostream, including a photo of the flat-twelve engine. Click the link above to take a closer look. Even if you’re in the U.S.

Drive Angry

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Despite the presence of Amber Heard, 2011’s ‘Drive Angry’ is a properly awful movie. She does take up about 4/5 of the movie poster though, so we suspect those marketing it knew that themselves.

Kirill Mazurov (aka desert752) is driving angry too, having built this ‘Angry Racer’ to compete in a BuWizz contest, only for it to be cancelled as a casualty of Coronavirus.

Nonetheless, contest or not Kirill has a produced a great creation, with Power Functions motors hooked up to a BuWizz bluetooth battery that delivers eight times the power of LEGO’s own system.

All that power in such a lightweight model makes the ‘Angry Racer’ a little… drifty, and you can see more at both Flickr and Eurobricks, where a video of Kirill’s creation driving in anger can be viewed and a link to building instructions can be found so you can drive angry for yourself.

Click the links above to take a look whilst we continue Googling Amber Heard…