But it is yellow. And excellent. This lovely ’80s ‘cafe racer’ motorcycle comes from previous bloggee tango-zero. There’s a detailed engine, rear suspension, and a beautifully replicated front telescopic fork with steering. See more on Brickshelf.
If there’s an unmodified R32 Skyline GT-R in existence, we’re yet to see it. And so to today’s creation, which has also cast OEM originality aside in order to create something rather more special. Which does mean it features a few non-LEGO parts, but seeing is the real car upon which it’s based features a few non-Nissan ones, we think it’s alright.
Built by Gray Gear of Eurobricks, this Nissan Skyline GT-R R32 recreates the car from the Wangan Midnight cartoon, including custom wheels, a replica straight six engine refitted with a single-shot turbo, and a few bodywork parts not officially produced by LEGO, seeing as they don’t come in black.
The model also features a working six-speed gearbox, all-wheel-drive, all-wheel independent suspension, functioning steering, plus opening doors, hood and trunk. There’s more to see for all of that at the Eurobricks forum via the link above, whilst we fall deeper into the Wangan Midnight YouTube rabbit hole.
America really likes pick-up trucks. The best selling vehicles in the U.S. are the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado, and Dodge Ram, followed by a pair of SUVs (the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V respectively). In fact only two vehicles in the top eight are cars. Tump is (rightly) called out on his total disregard for CO2 emissions legislation, but it’s not like he’s going against the wishes of the American people, who – based on their vehicular choices – must all be lumberjacks during the week and tow boats at the weekend.
Of course the electric revolution will reach pick-up trucks one day, and until then Ford at least have taken a small step in the right direction by replacing most of their old V8s with smaller, marginally less environmentally catastrophic, turbocharged units.
Back to electricity though, and pick-ups are perfect for electrification, having loads of chassis space for batteries, and supposedly often doing tasks that would benefit from electric motor torque, like lumberjacking and towing boats…
The electrification of Lego pick-ups is the opposite however, seeing as there is no covered body to hide the battery box, and both it and the motors have to be squeezed inside a cabin full of cabiny things. That hasn’t stopped mktechniccreations though, who has built this superbly accurate Model Team/Creator Ford F-150 that would be bloggable on looks alone, and yet – by witchcraft and magic – has equipped his model with a perfectly-concealed full remote control drive system with Power Functions motors and a BuWizz bluetooth battery.
It’s quite a feat of engineering and if you’d like to have a go yourself MK has released building instructions so you can learn how he’s done it! There’s more to see of this remarkably packaged Ford F-150 at both MK’s Bricksafe gallery and at the Eurobricks forum, where you can see images showing how the motors are fitted and find a link to building instructions – take a look via links!
We’re effectively children here at TLCB, thus we find bright colours very stimulating, particularly when they’re deployed in a manner such as this. David Roberts‘ ‘Sunray’ takes its cues from the classic video game ‘Wipeout’ and there’s more to see of his superbly liveried anti-gravity racer at his photostream – click the link above make the jump.
*Today’s excellent alternative title song.
The muscle car market has gone mad in recent years. Upwards of 700bhp is now available from stock, and whilst many modern muscles cars have now added revolutionary new technologies such as ‘steering’ and ‘suspension’, we suspect actually using all that power is a difficult thing to do. Resulting in happenings like this. And this. And this. And this.
Things were little different back in the late ’60s, when the first power race between muscle car makers began. This was one of Ford’s efforts from the time; the Mustang Boss 429. The ‘429’ moniker stood for the V8 engine’s cubic inch capacity, which translates to seven litres. Seven. Most European cars at the time made do with just over one.
Of course the Boss’s steering, braking and suspension were – in true muscle car tradition – woefully inadequate, meaning that morons-with-daddy’s-money in 1969 could plow their new car into a street light in much the same way as they do today, only without the event being captured on YouTube.
Today though, we’re joining the muscle car crashing fraternity too, thanks to Hogwartus, and this superb SBrick-powered remote control Technic Boss 429.
Driven by two L Motors, with a Medium Motor turning the steering and another controlling the four-speed sequential gearbox, Hogwartus’s creation is a riot to drive. That is until we spun it into a kitchen cabinet. We’ll blame the Mustang-accurate torsion bar rear suspension for that faux-par. The front suspension is independent though, and the model also includes opening and locking doors, hood and trunk, a replica 7-litre V8 engine (that turns via the drive motors), sliding seats, and LED headlights.
There’s more to see of Hogwartus’s stunning Technic ’69 Mustang Boss 429 at the Eurobricks forum by clicking here, plus via the truly excellent video below, which must be one of the few Mustang videos on YouTube that don’t end like this.
YouTube Video
Curvy, yellow, delicious, and contained within its own handy wrapper, the banana is a wonderful fruit. Equally curvy, nearly as yellow, and highly delicious (if you’re a TLCB Elf), Tauriel1‘s hot rodded cab-over got the Elves most excited. Until they found out it’s digital, meaning it can neither be ridden on or chewed.
Still, it does look absolutely marvellous, and if you’re wondering ‘why don’t TLCB publicise more digital builds?’, it because they rarely look like this.
Newcomer Tauriel1 has an array of digital creations in their photostream and you can view more of the ‘cab-over’ featured here alongside their other designs on Flickr. Click the link above to make like a banana and split.
This is not a car, and nor is it a real aircraft, instead coming from the video game ‘Ace Combat’. It’s also a bit nonsensical, being Japanese but named after a Welsh dragon, however… it looks so cool!
Built by Corvin Stichert of Flickr, this beautifully detailed mini-figure version of the fictional ‘X-02 Wyvern’ fighter captures the variable geometry design brilliantly, and there’s more to see at Corvin’s ‘X-02 Wyvern’ album. Click here to fly over to the complete gallery.
It’s the early ’80s, perms are big, jackets are leather, and 200mph, self-driving, talking cars exist only in the imagination. And then NBC shoved C-3PO into the dashboard of a Pontiac Trans-Am. Perms remained big and jackets remained leather, but the 200mph, self-driving, talking car was now a reality, on screen at least.
The Knight Industries Two Thousand (K.I.T.T) became the coolest car for every eight year old in ’80s America, and even though most of the technology it featured is now hilariously out-of-date (even Mrs. TLCB Writer’s compact hatchback can do more* today), it’s still one of the most famous and enduring TV cars of all time.
Capturing K.I.T.T superbly in mini-figure scale, László Torma has constructed a 6-wide version of the camp coupe complete with a mini-fig Michael Knight, and he’s made instructions available too so that you can build your very own. Head to Laszlo’s photostream via the link above to take “a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man that doesn’t exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the powerless, and the helpless in a world of criminals that operate above the law“. It doesn’t get any more ’80s than that!
*OK, it can’t do 200mph, despite the way Mrs. TLCB Writer drives it.
Trucks such as this one always seem to have fancy names when LEGO produce them. Not at this blog though, where they are simply known as a ‘skip lorry’, seeing as they’re a lorry with an, er… skip. Said skip is usually full of an old bathroom, ripped out of an old lady’s bungalow when the new owners moved in, and all the junk from the neighbourhood lobbed into it by every house within walking distance whilst it was on the road.
Previous bloggee Damjan97PL/damianPLE’s fully RC Technic skip lorry is so realistic we’re surprised it doesn’t come with an old lady’s bathroom in the skip on the back to be honest, but besides that rather glaring omission he’s nailed it.
An SBrick provides bluetooth control for the motorised drive, four-wheel steering, raising/lowering rear axle (with automatic steering detachment when raised), and the skip loading arm, whilst there’s also a working six-cylinder engine underneath the tilting cabin, manually operated stabiliser legs and functioning suspension too.
There’s more of Damain’s remote control skip lorry to see at both the Eurobricks forum and at his Bricksafe gallery – click the links to chuck your rubbish on top of an old lady’s bathroom.
Matthew Terentev’s Volga/GAZ-2402 station wagon has appeared here before, being a somewhat unusual choice for a Technic ‘Supercar’, with working steering, engine, and suspension. He’s now gone a step further though, replacing the miserable inline 4-cylinder engine with a V8 (which the real 2402 was actually available with), and he’s added a whole host of other exciting modifications including lowered suspension, aero, and – most importantly – racing decals and stripes, which are worth at least an extra 200bhp on their own.
We’re not sure how suited a Volga/GAZ station wagon is to drifting (about as much as your Mom is to the 110m hurdles we suspect), but because we’re rather sad here at TLCB we love unlikely cars turned into racers. Plus the Elves would’ve have rioted had we not blogged a drift car with racing stripes.
There’s more to see of Matthew’s drifty GAZ-2402 station wagon (and the unmodified permit-only family car on which it’s based) at his photostream. Go sideways in the Soviet Union via the link above!
It’s been a Technic-filled day at TLCB, but are you looking at some of the models featured here and wondering how they work? From steering and suspension, to ratchets, walkers, gearboxes – LEGO Technic can be used to create any mechanism you can think of. And probably a lot you can’t.
And that’s where Jorge Moreno Barrios’ eBook ‘LEGO Engineering Fundamentals’ shines, as the first 3D interactive guide to creating incredible mechanisms (and the basics too) from LEGO Bricks.
We were given access to an early copy of Jorge’s eBook, which is available to purchase through Apple Books, to assess how it works. And how it works is rather brilliant.
‘LEGO Engineering Fundamentals’ is divided into five chapters, each of which features 3D interactive renders of the subject;
1. LEGO brick alignment (effectively the measurements needed to build)
2. A complete 3D catalogue of LEGO Technic parts, sorted by use (e.g. ‘steering’, ‘gears’ etc.) with part numbers
3. Simple machines, consisting of levers, pulleys, wedges and screws
4. Basic mechanisms, including gears, ratchets, cams, chains, and junctions and linkages
5. Basic structures
Each render can be rotated on any axis, allowing the reader to see it from any angle, with the moving components rotating/sliding/lifting on a loop as if they were built from real bricks. Rotating the subject also reveals Jorge’s explanation of the render in question, with key words highlighted to ease understanding. If that sounds complicated it isn’t, and it works wonderfully. Naturally we can’t share the interactive element here, but hopefully the static images we’ve included will provide some insight.
In the examples above the inputs and outputs turn on the screen, with all the components of each mechanism following suit. Many of these are very simple pulleys and levers, taking readers through the basics of both Technic building and machines in general, but some – despite the ‘basic’ in the chapter titles – delve into advanced physics, recreating the beautifully intricate designs by noted engineers and kinetic sculptures. Again, each of these is completely interactive, and is ‘alive’ on the screen running through its mechanised loop to demonstrate how the design works in practice, with some looking really rather incredible indeed.
It’s mechanisms such as these we think readers will find most useful, as ‘LEGO Engineering Fundamentals’ provides a toolbox of options for ‘I want my creation to do [this], but I don’t known how’.
So is the eBook perfect? – It is Version 1 after all.
Not yet, as there are a few of refinements we’d like to see for v2, chief among which is a contents page. The ‘How this book works’ animation also didn’t work on our copy, and there a few official LEGO sets rendered within the book that are – we think – used as examples of either parts or mechanisms in action, but without any explanation. A brief ‘Set No. [xxxx] uses pneumatic cylinders and a basic lever. You can find details of these on pages [x]’ would definitely help to explain their context. The same is true for a few mechanisms that don’t have descriptive text – often because it isn’t needed, but we would prefer at least a title for every render as a minimum.
Verdict
Despite a few obvious improvements, the basics behind ‘LEGO Engineering Fundamentals’ are superb, and the first time you rotate a moving mechanism on screen to see the explanation appear you do go ‘Ooooh!’. Well we did anyway.
It’s also the first book we’ve received here at TLCB that has actively made us want to try creating new things, things we would never have thought of on our own, nor had the engineering capability to do. For that reason alone we can’t recommend ‘LEGO Engineering Fundamentals’ highly enough.
For now, this is a four star book. With a few tweaks for v2, it’ll be an easy five.
The halls of TLCB Towers were a bustling place today. Several Elves have recently returned with finds, TLCB staff were pretending to be busy to avoid sweeping up the cage room, and the Le Mans 2020 livestream was ticking over in the corner. All of which meant we were thoroughly distracted from the Elf proudly riding atop this rather brilliant remote control Caterpillar D10 bulldozer until it was too late.
‘Too late’ in this case means we now have a bit more than sweeping up to do, as several Elves have been smeared across the corridor (and over the front of the bulldozer) thanks to builder keymaker‘s inclusion of four Power Functions motors and a third-party BuWizz bluetooth battery, controlling the drive, steering, and ripper and blade mechanisms.
Individual suspension on the tracks’ jockey wheels plus track tensioners meant the blade stayed at Elf-smearing height even if one of them went under the tracks, whilst a working V8 engine, detailed cabin and engine bay, and opening doors and tool compartment add to the realism, if not the Elf-smushing capabilities.
We now have some considerable floor cleaning to do, as a number of our smelly little workers were caught off guard and fell victim the the D10’s blade, then tracks, then ripper, which doesn’t sound fun at all. Whilst we get on with that you can see more of keyworker’s most excellent creation at both the Eurobricks forum via the link above, or on Bricksafe, where over forty high quality images are available to view.
Lastly, if you’re wondering how mechanisms such as those found on keyworker’s ‘dozer work then come back to The Lego Car Blog later today where we’ll be sharing an awesome new tool that does just that!
Painting a Ferrari in Lamborghini green will probably get you a ‘Cease and Desist‘ letter from Ferrari’s over-zealous legal department, but seeing as this one is constructed from left over bits of Lamborghini, it makes sense. Flickr’s James Tillson is the builder behind this lime green Ferrari Dino 246, and he has form, winning TLCB’s Lock-Down B-Model Competition with his previous Lamborghini-to-Ferrari conversion. His Ferrari Dino features the usual Technic Supercar functions and there’s more of the build to see at his photostream – click here to take a look before Ferrari write him an angry letter.
It’s an entirely Technic day today here at The Lego Car Blog, starting with this; LoMaC‘s neat Nissan Skyline R34, complete with a working six cylinder engine, steering, and opening doors, hood and trunk. Oh, and some Shelby-esque racing stripes, which means it gets the Elves’ seal of approval. Building instructions are available and there’s more to see on Flickr via the link.
Which is like a regular ‘Swooosh!’, only with more noble gas. This is Sylon-tw‘s ‘Cyber Neon Circuit’ racer, complete with ginormous glowing engines, a pair of rather interesting looking mini-figure pilots, and the coolest directional road sign we’ve ever seen. Click the link above to join the race!
