BuWizz | Bluetooth Control Battery | Review

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Lego BuWizz Review

The Lego Car Blog Elves love remote control Lego creations. Well, they love them if they are at the controls. As regular readers will know there have been a number of remote control related incidents here at TLCB Towers, resulting in much Elven hospitalisation. Well things are about to get taken up a notch…

Revealed here as a Kickstarter project back in June 2016 the BuWizz bluetooth control battery brick has become a regular third-party accessory within the Lego Community. With claims of up to eight times the power of LEGO’s own Power Functions battery set-up, now expanded to twelve times with the release of BuWizz 2.0, the potential to transform the way Lego models move is huge. But does the BuWizz live up to the hype? We’ve been sent a copy to find out…

Lego BuWizz Review

The Brick

Our BuWizz arrived a simple cardboard box, packaged only with a little piece of paper denoting the required warnings and LED indicator meanings. The BuWizz brick is a clever thing, incorporating both a rechargeable li-ion battery and a bluetooth control into one 8×4 stud box, reminiscent of LEGO’s own battery boxes from the 1980s. There are studs on top, tubes on the bottom, and four Technic pin holes with which the BuWizz can be attached to genuine LEGO pieces.

Our BuWizz came in a dark grey hue that we don’t think matches any of LEGO’s colours, but seeing as it can be mounted internally within a creation an exact match isn’t required. The moulding quality is OK, perfectly adequate for the job in hand, but certainly not as good as an official LEGO piece (or the rival SBrick reviewed here previously). On top of the BuWizz are two connection ports, a status LED, and four LEGO Power Functions compatible power outlets.

You must charge your BuWizz upon arrival via a micro USB, which the pack does not contain. This is a bit of a shame as it means the device is not truly plug-and-play, requiring a lead from something else in order to charge. We found a lead, plugged in the BuWizz, which let us know it was charging via the LED on top, and busied ourselves for a few hours.

Lego BuWizz Review

Set Up

Upon returning to our BuWizz a green light indicated we were ready to go. Like the aforementioned SBrick, the Buwizz brick uses an app to connect your phone or tablet to itself. The app is an easy download and connects the device seamlessly. Within it are six pre-programmed control interfaces available to operate your model. Each requires a small amount of set-up so that the app knows which of your motors is connected to which port which is simple enough, although there is no ‘test’ function as per the SBrick, which would be useful.

We connected four XL motors mounted within a direct-drive skid-steer test rig to the BuWizz battery and hit the controls. Weirdly one motor (and only one) span the wrong way, but the BuWizz’s simple ‘reverse’ option soon cured that. Then, because we have the mental age of five, we engaged ‘Ludicrous Mode’…

Inspired by Tesla, BuWizz’s ‘Ludicrous Mode’ turns up the power to the motors by a factor of three. Multiply that by the four motors you can drive at once and you get twelve times the power! And boy, does it show… Continue reading →

Catching Some ‘Z’s

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Lego Datsun Fairlady Z

Nothing beats catching some ‘Z’s. Fortunately we can do just that thanks to Simon Prezepiorka and these three brilliant Datsun Fairlady/240Zs. Simon’s Speed Champions builds have become firm favourites here at TLCB Towers and you can check more of this trio as well as his past creations via the link to Flickr above.

Lego Datsun Fairlady Z

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird | Picture Special

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Lego SR-71 Blackbird

First flying in 1964 the amazing Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird is still the world’s highest flying and fastest manned air-breathing aircraft, despite retiring back in 1999. With a top speed in excess of Mach 3 (that’s over 3,500km/h!), the Blackbird could fly higher and faster than even missiles.

Lego SR-71 Blackbird

Such incredible altitude and speed meant the SR-71 needed to be built from very exotic materials, specifically titanium; which made up 92% of the airframe. The U.S. didn’t have access to titanium itself, so had to source it from the USSR, with which the Blackbird was of course designed to fight during the Cold War. A complicated route via fictitious organisations and third-world economies delivered the newly acquired Soviet titanium ore to the U.S, where it was used to build a plane to spy on the Soviets… isn’t military history fun!

Lego SR-71 Blackbird

In total thirty two Lockheed SR-71 Blackbirds were constructed, with the final two being used by NASA until the late 1990s. During a long operational life twelve aircraft were lost to accidents, but thanks to the SR-71’s ludicrous speed and primitive radar-defying stealth technology not a single plane was downed by enemy action.

Lego SR-71 BlackbirdToday the surviving Blackbirds reside in America’s aerospace museums (or at NASA), but we’ve got one more to add to the SR-71 alumni, thanks to Flickr’s Plane Bricks and this awe-inspiring Lego replica of the world’s most spectacular aircraft. Put simply Plane Bricks’ stunning recreation of the SR-71 Blackbird is one of the most complete and impressive Lego aircraft that we’ve ever come across, with a suitably extensive gallery of superb imagery available on Flickr. Click the link in the text above to reach Mach 3.3 and take a look.

Brickheadz to the Future!

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Lego Brickheadz DeLorean Back to the Future

LEGO’s new Brickheadz sets have spawned an invasion of brick-headed cuteness, with fan-built characters popping up everywhere. Now they can pop up anytime too, thanks to this delightfully cutesy Brickheaded Delorean DMC-12 by Flickr’s jp_velociraptor in full Back to the Future spec!

Lego Brickheadz DeLorean Back to the Future

Inside the flying time-machine are a Brickheadz Doc Brown and Marty McFly (of course!), and the model can transfer between flying and driving modes as per the movie car too. Click the link above to hit 88mph in the cutest way possible!

Lego Brickheadz DeLorean Back to the Future

That Stance Tho

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Lego Technic Remote Control Stanced Car

Let’s be clear about this. ‘Stancing’ cars ruins them. It ruins the way they ride, the way they corner, tyre wear, fuel consumption…

The Elves however, having tiny brains similar to that of your average bro, love stanced cars, and thus there’d have been a mass Elven sulk if we didn’t feature this one. Fortunately we can, as whilst the subject matter is questionable the build itself is most excellent, and the builder is something of a legend too.

Lego Technic RC Car Stanced

Powered by LEGO’s Power Functions system and controlled via bluetooth via the 5-star-rated SBrick, Mahjqa’s ‘SUP BRO’ stanced tuner runs a 22.5 degree camber on its remote control chassis. Despite this obvious handicap it still looks proper fun to pilot around an empty car park – take a look via the video below!

 YouTube Video

There’s more to see of Mahjqa’s latest build via both Flickr and the Eurobricks discussion forum, plus we’re delighted to reveal that Mahjqa has become the latest builder to be awarded Master MOCer status here at The Lego Car Blog!

Joining fourteen other of the world’s very best Lego builders, Mahjqa tells us his inspiration, reveals what sort of LEGO brick he would be, and explains how he creates his amazing models. Read his Master MOCers interview below!

Master MOCers Season 2, Episode 4

Mahjqa

Wedged

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Lego Technic Wedge Concept

The Elves have been a bit quiet of late, but as we only feed them when they find something we never have to wait too long for a blog-worthy creation.

Today’s comes from previous bloggee Horcik Designs, who has built this wonderful wedgy Technic concept car. Paying homage to all manner of designs from the 1970s (in celebration of 40 Years of LEGO Technic), Horcik’s model not only looks utterly brilliant – in that weird 70’s way where things simultaneously looked both quite cool and a bit crap – it features a wealth of awesome Technic functionality underneath its pointy exterior.

There’s working steering, suspension, opening gull-wing doors and tailgate, a pop-up headlight (singular) via an interior lever, and a mid-mounted transverse inline 3-cylinder engine. Take a closer look for yourself at Horcik’s photostream by clicking here.

Race on Sunday Sell on Monday

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Lego Audi Sport quattro S1 E2

Contrary to popular belief Audi were not the first to bring all-wheel-drive to performance cars. However their ‘quattro’ system undoubtedly brought all-wheel-drive performance into the mainstream, and it changed rallying forever.

Launched in 1980 the Audi quattro brought several innovative new technologies into one glorious package, including all-wheel-drive, turbocharging, and a delightfully weird inline 5-cylinder engine. Audi entered their new car in the World Rally Championship’s Group B category, winning the championship in 1982 and 1984, plus the Pike’s Peak Hillclimb too.

By 1985 a variety of all-wheel-drive turbocharged rivals had caught – and then overtaken – the rally pioneer, beating Audi at their own game. This led Audi Sport to chop a chunk of length from the quattro’s wheelbase and up power to a very unofficial 500bhp+. The Sport quattro was born, a comedically ugly machine that was devastating effective. Best of all due to the FIA’s homologation rules a few hundred Sport quattros had to be produced for the road, meaning you could buy your very own World Rally Car for trips to Walmart.

Suggested by a reader we have both the rally and road versions of the Sport quattro in today’s post, each brilliantly built in Speed Champions scale by previous bloggee Marc ‘Edge’. There’s more to see of Marc’s rally and road Sport quattros on Flickr – click the links above to head to a gravelly forest circa-1985.

Lego Audi Sport quattro

Finnians Shipyard

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Lego Finnians Shipyard

OK, this is clearly not a car. But it is gorgeous, and contains so many wonderful Town scale vehicles it’s sure worth publicising here at The Lego Car Blog. Built by previous bloggee Konajra this is ‘Finnians Shipyard’ that forms part of a much larger – and ridiculously impressive – ‘Brickton Harbour‘ build, which contains even more brilliant boats, buildings and vehicles.

Back to Finnians and underneath that utterly brilliant roof is a beautiful ship under construction, whilst outside are a neat forklift, a superbly detailed electrician’s truck and a magnificent beam crane. Inside the ship-builder is fully detailed and includes some excellent highly realistic lighting thanks to the guys at Brickstuff.

Lego Finnians Shipyard

There’s much more to see of Konajra’s spellbinding creation on Flickr here and you can see more the wider build via the first link.

Blackfish

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Lego Nautilus Car

Today’s post features a car that is the exact opposite of everything in the staff car park. Extravagant, opulent, unnecessary even… Redfern1950s’ latest creation has more common with TLCB Executive Washroom and Sauna than with anything we’re driving.

It comes of course from the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which was, frankly, not very good. Not so the car, which was built for real in all of its twenty-two foot glory from the remnants of a Ford Cargo truck. It was so real in fact that it really drives, it’s road legal(ish), and a replica recently came up for auction on eBay, although our budget wouldn’t stretch to it.

Lego Nautilus Car

Redfern’s incredible Model Team recreation of Captain Nemo’s ‘Nautilus’ swaps the original white for black (looking a million times more sinister as a result!) and features opening doors and hood, under which is a suitably enormous V12 engine.

There’s a whole lot more to see of this amazing build at Redfern’s photostream – take a look via the link, plus you can see how the original UK-made movie car was built by clicking here and view the recently sold American replica by clicking here.

Lego Nautilus Car

Something Something Something Dark Side

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Lego TIE/x1 Advanced Darth Vader

Ergh, Star Wars… OK, here goes. This is Darth Vader’s TIE/x1 Advanced and… that’s all we’ve got. The proper Lego blogs will probably lose their shit over this build when they find it, so be sure to check them out for a better explanation. In the meantime you can see more of this thoroughly excellent (and commissioned) recreation of Darth Vader’s ride by Jerac at his photostream – Click here to use the force. Or something.

Lego TIE/x1 Advanced Darth Vader

Belville Bird

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Lego MH-6 Little Bird

The male figurines from 1990s LEGO Belville have built an escape! Housed in a world of pinks, purples and glitter, even a plethora of attractive female figurines couldn’t compensate for their inescapable male-toy need for guns, helicopters and black. How they’ve found the pieces to construct their escape we’ll never know, but their MH-6 Little Bird helicopter looks the shiznit! See more courtesy of Lennart C on Flickr.

Fine Vintage

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Lego Mercer 5 Sporting 1920

LEGO’s Speed Champions sets have brought some of the most exciting new and classic real-world cars to Lego fans in brick form. From modern McLarens to classic Mustangs, the range covers about 60 years of motoring greats. But what if it went back into the annuls of automotive history just a little further…

These three gorgeous Speed Champions style vintage cars come from Flickr’s Łukasz Libuszewski, who has done a wonderful job recreating their largely-forgeotten shapes in our favourite Danish plastic.

Lego 1928 Cadillac

The first (top, in red) is a 1920 Mercer 5 Sporting, built by the American motor car company that manufactured high performance cars from 1909 until the Great Depression put them out of business in 1925 some 5,000 units later.

The second (above, in green) is also a vintage American, but from a company that survived the depression era and is still making cars today. Founded in 1902 Cadillac are one of the oldest car companies in the world and have been owned by General Motors since 1909. The model pictured above dates from 1928 and Łukasz has used some ingenious building techniques to recreate the cycle-wings and carriage-type body typical of the time.

Lego Lancia Lambda 1922

The final of Łukasz’s three vintage builds (above, in brown) comes from the other side of the Atlantic and Italy, where Lancia have been producing cars since 1906. Lancia are now sadly a shadow of their previous greatness and today produce just one car (an ugly Fiat knock-off), making us fear that they’ll be gone altogether before long.

This 1922 Lambda was the polar opposite of their hateful modern offering, a revolutionary design that pioneered independent suspension, the world’s first unitary body, and that produced almost 70bhp from its four-cylinder engine.

The Lambda has been recreated beautifully by Łukasz in the model pictured above and there’s more to see of it the other excellent vintage Speed Champions cars shown here by visiting his photostream – click here to see some of the finest cars of 1920s.

Shifting Gears

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Lego Technic V10 Supercar

This is the ‘Ultimatum GTR V10’, it was suggested to us by a reader, and it comes from Pvdb of Eurobricks. It is – as you can see – a very pretty thing, and draws upon a number of modern supercars for inspiration. However it’s what is underneath the sleek bodywork that’s of most note.

The usual Technic Supercar features are all present; steering, suspension, a piston engine (in this case a V10) and a gearbox. A really good gearbox…

LEGO’s official 42056 Technic Porsche 911 GT3 RS set was exclusively revealed with a sequential paddle-shift gearbox here at The Lego Car Blog back in 2016, which made the anoraks in the office who spotted the feature very excited. The reality of this ground-breaking transmission however, was to be a colossal let-down. Bags of friction, only four gears, and they shifted in the wrong order. Not good.

Lego Technic Sequential Gearbox Instructions

Pvdb’s supercar aims to address the shortcomings of the 42056 set with his own sequential gearbox, with five accurately spaced ratios, plus neutral and reverse, a compact design, and control via a racing-style sequential gear lever.

The result looks miles better than LEGO’s own effort and you can check it out for yourself via Eurobricks at the link above, plus you can watch the transmission in action and build your own version of the Ultimatum GTR thanks to the instructions that have been made available on Rebrickable.

Lego Technic V10 Supercar

Technic Bugatti Chiron | Picture Special

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Lego Technic Bugatti Chiron

A very special supercar requires a very special Lego model…

LEGO’s own Bugatti Chiron set, previewed here at The Lego Car Blog earlier in the year, is due later in 2018. However one builder has beaten LEGO to it, and in doing so may have set the bar not just higher than LEGO themselves could hope to achieve, but possibly higher than any Technic supercar has done to date. This is Leviathan‘s 4,000-piece, 3.7KG, two year in the making 1:8 Technic Bugatti Chiron supercar.

Lego Technic Bugatti Chiron RC

Designed as a modular construction, as per a real car, Leviathan’s Bugatti Chiron features Power Functions remote control operated via a third-party BuWizz bluetooth brick, a seven speed dual-clutch gearbox, all-wheel-drive, working steering with Ackermann geometry, electronically height adjustable independent suspension, a replicated W16 engine, and even active aerodynamics.

Lego Technic Bugatti Chiron Remote Control

Five Power Functions motors are controlled by the BuWizz bluetooth brick, with two RC motors driving all four wheels, an XL motor powering the seven-speed dual clutch gearbox, and a fourth motor powering the steering. The fifth motor uses a gearbox to switch between two functions; raising/lowering the suspension, and controlling the three-position rear spoiler/air-brake (shown in the picture above in air-brake mode and in the image below fully retracted).

Lego Technic Bugatti Chiron Supercar

Leviathan’s Bugatti Chiron is very probably the most advanced Lego model we’ll see all year, and if LEGO’s own 42083 Technic Bugatti Chiron set is half as good when it arrives later on this year it’ll definitely be a set worth having. In the meantime you can read full details of Leviathan’s unbelievable creation at the Eurobricks forum, where there are also images showing the amazing engineering within, you can see the full gallery of images on Flickr, and you can watch a video demonstrating all of the model’s incredible functions by clicking here.

Of Rust and Gasoline

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Lego Town Garage

This absolutely splendid rural workshop comes from previous bloggee Markus Rollbuhler, and there’s so much brilliance contained within that we barely know where to start. We’ll pick out the lovely tow truck, a simply ingenious bench, and a delightful bird mid-flight as our favourite components, with another hundred or so close behind. Take a look for yourself via the link above, zoom in, and start spotting the countless examples of Lego-brick mastery.