TLCB regular Senator Chinchilla returns with this classic hot rod. Apparently, “There’s no replacement for displacement” and in this case the giant engine has displaced the bonnet* from the car’s body. Speaking of which, the engine catches the eye but there are some nice curves at the rear too. Click this link to the Senator’s Photostream to see more of this car and video of his working V12 Lego pneumatics motor, which sadly won’t fit in this car.
*translation = “hood”
The Flying Dutchman is a ship that has been condemned to wander the oceans for all eternity. It’s origins lie centuries ago and it has been celebrated in plays, films and operas. Now it has been created in Lego bricks too.
This particular version has been built by W. Navarre on Flickr. The hull looks just as worn and battered as wooden ship should look like after years at sea. It also features a nice balcony for the captain at the stern. Click the link in the text to see the ragged, brick-built sails in more detail and hope this never crosses your bows.
Come with us on a journey as we review the cheapest set that The Lego Car Blog has ever examined. We thought that we’d have a change from the big Technic sets that usually feature here. At £3.49 (30% off) from amazon will our purchase prove to be value for money? How will it rate for fun and playability? Will the Elves eat most of the 64 pieces before we can use them? Read on…
Packaged in LEGO’s usual bright and attractive box, 31041 scores over a large Technic set by only requiring a strong thumb to open its cardboard tab. None of that cutting or ripping sticky tabs here. Collectors will obviously want to cut the packaging open with a sharp knife in order to preserve its collectability, in a manner similar to this video. A recurring theme of our reviews is the need for parts to come in numbered bags in order to reduce confusion & sorting and to help make building more pleasurable. Sadly the bag of parts is not numbered, possible as there is only one. On the up side, a quick flick through the 32 page instruction book reveals that it contains instructions for all three models. As we’ve mentioned in other reviews, it would be great it if LEGO did this for their big, expensive Technic sets too. At the moment, builders having to traipse off to Lego.com and download PDF files.
Moving on to the build, the headline model is rapidly built in 14 pages. The construction is the conventional, studs up type. There’s nice use of commonplace bricks, such as 1×1 round bricks and headlight bricks with 1×1 round plates to give the detailing. There’s also the neat use of a 1×2 tile, at the centre of the model, which will make it easier for children to take apart and re-build (which is what LEGO is supposed to be for!). The backhoe is a conventional bit of building too but the front bucket and its arms, are a good example of economical use of parts to good effect.
Builders young and old can learn quite a bit from this tiny model. As with short stories when compared with novels, micro-scale builds force modellers to consider each and every brick carefully. With model completed, you’re left with a spare 1×1 trans-orange round plate, a dark grey clip arm and three 1×1 light grey round plates to shovel around.
In terms of functionality, this is a strong build, which rolls well across a floor or table. Sadly it suffers from the usual problem in LEGO vehicles of having poor Ackerman steering geometry. This is probably due to it having no steering but let’s skate over that one. Both buckets are firmly attached to the body of the tractor and have good ranges of movement. It’s a bit tricky to keep the grey plates on the front bucket, though this can be improved by swapping the corner pieces from the backhoe with on of the 1×2 edge pieces. Overall the model is fun and nice proportioned. It would be great if it had different diameter tyres, fore & aft, like a JCB but that would reduce the flexibility for making other models.
The other two vehicles are strong and fun to build and play with too. The dumper is a particularly nice little model. The way that the rear skip hinges is neatly and interestingly done.
This set is a great little parts pack, with most of the pieces in standard LEGO colours such as black, yellow and grey. There are four, yellow 1×2 curved bricks amongst other useful stuff. It’s also a brilliant, cheap bit of fun for the younger builder in your household: a great addition to that order for the 42055 that you’re buying for yourself (yes, we know, those big yellow rings are essential for your next MOC and it’s the only way to get hold of them). At this price, you could buy three 31041s and build one of each vehicle to use together in a diorama (obviously you wouldn’t be playing with them). Go on, make that investment!
It’s been a fairly calm week at The Lego Car Blog Towers. You can therefore imagine our dismay, as we stumbled down the steps into our luxury penthouse editorial suite and found smushed Elves embedded in the Axminster. It could only mean one thing: the Elves had found a Technic Power Functions model.
This particular creation was discovered on MOCpages. It’s been built by Piotr K and features working 6×6 drive, suspension and gears. Weighing just over 2.5kg, it’s slightly lighter than the 1950s original. Sadly that weight of bricks can smush even the largest of our workforce. Whilst we’re cleaning up, click this link to MOCpages to see more photos and a video of the machine in action.
According to a theory set out in 1929, everybody in the world is just 6 friendship links away from everybody else. This puts the all of world’s population worryingly close to every one of the 257½ TLCB Elves. Perhaps it’s time to equip yourself with your own version of Mr. Airhorn?
In the meantime, Flickr’s F@bz has found something to do with the brick separators which seem to come with every Lego set nowadays. He’s used no less the 56 of them to make the hull of his Altura 2nd spaceship. Some of them came from his Juuken SHIP, which we featured in our SHIPtember 2015 Review. Click the link in the text to see more of this unusual craft.
Okay, we’re muddling up our Gerry Anderson TV series in the title but then we’ve been a bit muddled with our approach to this MOC. When the TLCB Elves first saw this smoothly built, neatly photographed car on MOCpages they thought that it was one of Dave Slater’s LDD creations. As such, it wouldn’t meet our Submissions Guidelines. MOCpages can mangle images at times. Fortunately the Elves discovered some better quality pictures on Dave’s Flickr Photostream and so it was yellow Smarties all round! This 2015 Stingray complements the 1969 version from the same builder, which we blogged two years ago. Click the link in the text to see more views, the opening doors and the two cars together.
Apparently this futuristic artic tractor unit is a taxi. Whatever its function, it’s well worth visiting its creator’s Flickr Photostream to see more details and play features. The builder goes by the name of Gray Mini, though we can’t spot that particular vehicle amongst his models.
Not a product of the Morris Garages car builders but a Formula 1 racing car with a body made from lightweight magnesium. This car is yet another fascinating piece of auto-racing history from Greg_998 on Flickr. In the late 1960s Honda saved 80kg from the weight of their previous F1 car by giving its body a magnesium shell, instead of an aluminium one.
This author fondly remembers setting fire to strips of magnesium in chemistry lessons, something which is now probably banned under Elf & Safety. Magnesium burns at roughly 3,100°C, making it great for things such as distress flares, sparklers on bonfire night and those things that Boy Scouts start fires with. Tragically these properties make it an incredibly dangerous material to have built a car from if it crashes and catches fire. You can see more images of this unusual car and read a full history by following this link to Greg’s Photostream.
Hiding underneath these massive wheel arches are tyres: honestly! The beautiful brick-built curves have been created by Black Flag on Flickr. Chris’s Photostream contains more smooth and streamlined hot-rods, plus a transporter, plus many photos of real-life hot-rods and is well worth visiting.
Whilst we explain to a hoard of giggling Elves why ’41 Willys are not rude, you can enjoy more photos of this car here, whilst being serenaded by Flanagan & Allen here.
This year’s Creations for Charity starts today. To find out how you can get involved, by either donating or buying Lego models, visit this link to the Creations for Charity website. Once again, Lego creations from some of the world’s top builders will up for sale, so it’s well worth keeping your eye on what’s going on. Your money will go to provide Lego sets for underprivileged children in countries around the world, so pay a visit now!
Being a car blog, we generally expect our Vipers to be made by Dodge, rather than a fictitious manufacturer from Earth’s colonies in outer space. Then again, years of blogging sci-fi builds has left us with as much understanding of the genre as the Elves have of their long-term, index-linked pensions superannuation, so we have an excuse.
This particular Colonial Viper Mk II has been built by Chris Maddison for this year’s SHIPtember festival. The 104 stud long SHIP is in stark contrast to the mighty battlecruisers and huge cargo carriers that people usually build. Instead it’s a single seat, lightweight space-fighter (though it does weigh 23lbs!). Click this link to see the album on Flickr, including the removable cockpit and greebled engines.
A successful raiding party of Elves has returned from the Eurobricks forums with not one but two Technic lorries. First up is an RC Isuzu NPR from Shineyu. This little gem is a real contrast to the massive front loader from the same builder, which we featured earlier in the week. Fortunately its small size meant that there was nowhere near the same scale of Elf carnage as on Monday.
In the meantime, there was no Elf carnage at all caused by Razor‘s Scania R500 6×4, as his Power Functions pieces are deployed in another MOC. Nonetheless, this lorry looks great and takes advantage of some of the new Technic panels in blue to get a smooth cab. Click the links in the text to see more of each vehicle.
Well, Buenos Aires to be truthful. The Lego Car Blog Elves love visiting Sariel’s Lego workshop at www.sariel.pl It’s the home of great Technic builds and there’s often hamster food lying around for our workers to steal to supplement their rations.
Sariel’s latest creation is this bright and brilliant Dakar Truck, based on a Tatra T815 4×4. It uses Lego’s bright, lime green, of which Sariel is apparently a big fan, plus loads of custom stickers. Twin Lego RC motors power the truck to 12kph, giving occasional cornering problems, as you can see in the video below.
Red has produced a monster-sized vintage racing car. Loosely based on a 1932 Alfa Romeo, this car has the aerodynamic streamlining that was all the fashion at the time smooth built in bricks. It also features working steering and an engine that uses so many ray-guns as greebles that it could almost be part of sci-fi SHIPtember.
Red has included multiple views in his uploads but we really liked the straight profile shots, which are an unusual way to present a MOC. Click this link to Flickr to more views and under the bonnet or click this link to hear the song that we stole today’s title from. Meanwhile, here’s the left profile:
The LUGNuts group on Flickr is currently holding a dragster contest and Lino Martins has produced a souped-up ute in response. The “ute” is a classic vehicle of the Australian outback, like the pick-up in North America or the camionetta in South America. Holden still produce utes, despite having been subsumed into the General Motors empire. With an engine of 6.2l available as standard, we don’t think that you’d need to do much to make a great drag-racer of this car. It’s also the only car manufacturer’s website that we’ve visited with a button to press just listen to the engine noise. Click here to see Lino’s ute at full size and click here to hear the roar of its modern counterpart.
