This superb 1940’s Russian ZIS truck with AK31 crane attachment was suggested to us via the Feedback page, after being discovered on MOCpages by a TLCB reader. Built by Ultimate Design the ZIS features working steering, suspension, engine, gearbox and crane. And more importantly it allows us to re-use a clever title this Valentine’s Day. You can see all the photos at Ultimate Design’s MOCpage via the link above, or you can view it on Flickr here.
It’s FebRovery again! For the third year running builders on Flickr have been spending the dark February nights coming up with all sorts of weird and wonderful space rovers. As well as building the models, part of the fun seems to be in writing the stories about the function of the vehicles. The “Churn-O-Matic” has some very unusual “wheels”. According to its creator, halfbeak, these enable it to travel the surface of a planet which is basically covered in custard. You can see more FebRovery fun by clicking this link to the group.
…To thoroughly misquote Andy Warhol.
A small, but very appealing contest is happening now on MOCpages. It’s open to anyone who’s got 15 pieces of Lego and is not afraid to use them.
The 15 Piece Vehicle Challenge is being organized by Sam the First, who knows just how to test any builder’s creativity. The elves like it because they can ride in the models…. like the one above, made by Alex Sonny. It’s a tiny roller. It really is.
The Elves, buoyed by their recent scoop of 2014’s Technic 42029, are feeling quite Technic-y at present. They don’t understand how Technic works most of the time, but they do have enormous fun playing with it. Especially when it’s something as big as this; a monster Terex RH400 mining excavator by Russian builder Sheo.
Powered by a total of nine Power Functions motors Sheo’s magnificent mining creation can drive, steer, rotate, raise and lower the boom, open and close the bucket, and – if you’re a Lego Car Blog Elf – run down a colleague and squash them into the office carpet. All this and it’s only mini-figure scale! You can see all the photos, videos and technical details of the Terex on Eurobricks via the link above.
Following the Elves’ successful spying at the end of 2013 we selected several ‘volunteers’ to get back into the office sling-shot to take the trip over the walls of the heavily guarded LEGO Group HQ. After several days, and with only a few Elves lost to the guard dogs, the first of the new Technic sets for the second half of 2014 is safely back at TLCB Towers. And here it is; no. 42029, the Customised Pick-Up Truck.
Aimed towards the top end of Technic’s range 42029 is pitched at the 10+ age group and features a whole host of mechanical features, and for once we have a large Technic set with no Power Function motors (although these can be retro-fitted).
Amongst the mechanical toys are; all-round suspension (which is actually too sophisticated for a truck like this), working steering, a piston engine, a front-mounted winch, and a tipping load-bed. It’s all nicely robust, playable, and will teach younger builders about the mechanics of a real vehicle in a way that Power Functions motors can’t really do.
Sadly though, to our eyes Technic 42029 fell out of the ugly tree quite hard. However, it does feature lots of lovely red panels (complete with roaring bear decals) that we’ll definitely see cropping up on MOCs before long, and the subject matter on which 42029 is based is often not aesthetically pleasing either, so it could even be called realistic. Either way, looks are subjective and it’s the mechanics of a set like this that are more important, something LEGO seems to be re-focussing on in the second half of 2014.
42029 will appear in stores around half-way through the year priced in the upper-middle of the range. This of course leaves space above it for a new flagship set to fill. A flagship that’s very big, and very yellow…
One of the few Elves left at TLCB Towers returned today with this; a huge Kenworth T800 Logging Truck. Flickr’s Brickbaron has presented his truck using some excellent outdoorsy photography, something we’d like to see more often here at TLCB. You can check the Kenworth out here.
With many of the Elves still dispatched on their secret mission to LEGO HQ we’ve got the time to feature more of your suggestions. Today’s comes from Andrew Somers on Flickr, with his ‘UH-73 Dakota’ military helicopter.
Loosely based on the Eurocopter UH-72 Lakota, his re-work has been lightly Americanised for the notoriously biased… er, we mean ‘patriotic’ US Military procurement suits. The real Eurocopter UH-72 is built by American Europcopter, a division of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company of North America, itself a division of Airbus Group, which by the sounds of it tried to get the word ‘America’ into the company names wherever possible to assist with U.S Sales. It seems to have worked, with over 250 Lakotas built for the U.S Military in the short time since it was introduced.
You can see more of Andrew’s upgraded Lego variant of Europe’s finest via the link above.
F@bz has attracted the attention of the Elves on previous occasions for his unusually shaped spacecraft but his latest creation is a car. Being a Citroen and therefore a French car, it has to have some novel feature designed into it such as the Renault 4’s gear stick or changing a wheel on a Citroen DS. This futuristic build has blue wheels, which light up, perfect for night-time blasting along those dark, empty autoroutes. They are made from the alien eggs that can be found in the latest Galaxy Squad sets. You can see more of this car by following this link.
With many of the Elves dispatched on a secret mission we’re relying on you a bit more for content at present. Luckily one of our readers suggested this via the Feedback and Submission Suggestions page; 896gerard’s Power Functions Parallel Parking Car.
Watching the elderly trying to park might be funny, but one day it’ll be each of us struggling to get a Nissan Micra into a space outside the Post Office. Help is at hand though, with the latest generation of vehicles fitted with Park Assist. Having owned a self-parking car I must confess to only using the system to show off to mates, but 896’s invention might just be genius enough to work in the real world. See how he does it on MOCpages at the link above.
We like Mazda’s little MX-5 Miata here at TLCB Towers. We also like hot rods, so throw the two together and we, er… well actually to be honest we’re not really sure if we like the idea of a Frankenmiata or not. But whilst the concept leaves us confused, we are sure that in this LEGO form at least, a V8 powered Miata hot rod is a damn cool ride.
Rhys’ Pieces is the mad professor who’s stitched the two patients together, and a very neat job he’s done too. See all the photos on Flickr at the link above, or alternatively you can read the full description on MOCpages here.
This beautiful shot comes from one of Flickr’s finest mini-figure scale builders, the brilliant _Tiler. We’ve featured _Tiler’s work here numerous times, and it’s normally of the loud and fast variety. His latest creation though, is pretty quiet and very very slow. And yet somehow possibly the coolest model he’s built to date, the awesome Apollo Luna Rover.
His latest build has also had the added bonus of turning the Elves into astronauts for the day. This means that although there are no boxes of any kind left in the office as they’ve all been appropriated for use as space helmets, it’s beautifully peaceful – as the Elves are silently and slowly moonwalking everywhere. A big whole-hearted ‘thank you’ to _Tiler from the everyone at TLCB Towers, and if you want to see more of his Apollo Lunar Rover you can do so via the handy link above.
Everyone likes a good forking. Brickshelf’s legosamigos certainly does, and although his Crawler Forklift is a type of vehicle we’ve not seen before here at TLCB Towers, when you need to fork in a muddy field there’s probably nothing better suited to the job. You can see all the photos of the Power Functions controlled creation at the link above.
The Lego Car Blog veteran Senator Chinchilla is back, with one of the office’s favourite cars, the brilliant Lotus Esprit. The Lotus though, came from one of the least appetising eras of automotive design. In the late ’70s cars were designed with rulers, and only rulers, interiors were made entirely from nasty grey plastic, and reliability – until the Japanese arrived at least – hovered somewhere between crap and really crap.
Somehow though, Lotus took all this and created one of the most desirable cars ever made. Penned by Giorgetto Giugiaro and his ruler the Series 1 Esprit launched in 1976, featuring a small 160bhp 4-cylinder engine attached to a Citroen gearbox. Not a recipe for speed then, but it looked fantastic and drove brilliantly. And if you were James Bond you could even tick ‘amphibious’ on the options list.
Four years and two series later the Esprit finally got the power it deserved, through the addition of the newfangled turbocharger, and a legend was born. Senator’s Lego model of the S1 is where it all started though, and you can see all the photos of his excellent recreation via Flickr at the link above.
The Elves are a bit grumpy this morning, as this post wasn’t found by them, but by one of our readers. Still, they should’ve been quicker. Alexander Paschoaletto is a previous ‘Featured TFOL’ here at TLCB, and he joins us as a Guest Blogger to explain his find:
If you’re looking for amazing recreations of remarkable Le Mans cars, then Greg 998 must be in your favorite builders list. From iconic Porsches to historic Ferraris, Greg knows how to ally functions to design.
His latest model, the great Ferrari 312 P(b) in 1:8 scale, features both steering and suspension. Not only this, he also made it according to the original colours and stickers! Having built the ’71 model myself and knowing how difficult is it to keep the proportions, I can only hope to be as skilled as him in the future. Keep building, Greg!
You can check out Alexander’s recommendation on MOCpages here.
Previous bloggee Maciej Drwiega makes his third appearance in three months here at The Lego Car Blog with this superb 1978 Kenworth K100C Cab-Over Flat-Top. Maciej is rapidly becoming one of the premier truck builders on Flickr, and you can see this and his previous creations via his photostream here.
