Tag Archives: BuWizz

Hauling up Hills

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This is a BR44, a heavy steam locomotive built from 1926 to 1949 to haul giant loads across Germany’s mountainous regions.

Able pull 1,200 tons through the hills, or 600 tons up steep inclines, the BR44’s were hugely impressive machines. We suspect much of what they hauled from the late-’30s was rather different from that originally intended though, with a simplified versions (ironically given the least simple title of ‘Übergangskriegslokomotives’) designed to speed up production during Germany’s phase of, er…. European ambition.

This brilliant brick-built recreation of the BR44 comes from Bricks_n_Trucks, who has not only replicated the design beautifully, there are two Power Functions L-Motors and a BuWizz 2.0 hidden inside to bring it to life.

There’s more of Bricks’ creation to see on Flickr, and you can travel into the mountains of wartime Germany via the link in the text above.

One Week of Mundanity!

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There’s just one week to go in BrickNerd and TLCB’s Festival of Mundanity!

We’re looking for your builds of boring vehicles. No Lamborghinis, Ferraris or Porsches here! There have been over forty competition entries so far, including a white Toyota Corolla, a Geo Tracker, a Hertz rental car lot, and a (rather inspired) shopping trolley.

There are some awesome prizes on offer for the winners including Game of Bricks lighting kits, iDisplayIt display stands, and a BuWizz Pro programmable bluetooth control!

To be in with a chance of scooping the swag get your mundane entry uploaded before the end of March 2022!

Alright M8

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This rather excellent Technic Supercar is a BMW M8 Competition, BMW’s 600bhp, twin-turbo V8, all-wheel-drive flagship.

Constructed by IA creations, this recreation of BMW’s super coupe includes a wealth of Technic functionality, with both traditional mechanical ‘supercar’ elements and motorised remote control.

A working V8 engine, all-wheel-drive, steering, and double-wishbone suspension take care of the former, whilst a BuWizz bluetooth battery powers twin drive motors, servo steering, and three sets of LEDs for the head and tail lights, enabling programmable bluetooth remote control.

It’s a fantastically well engineered creation and one that you can build for yourself too, as IA has made instructions available. Head to the Eurobricks forum for full details, plus you can find the complete image gallery of IA BMW M8 Competition on Bricksafe.

Finally, you can win an awesome BuWizz 3.0 Pro like the one powering IA’s magnificent M8 by entering TLCB and BrickNerd’s Festival of Mundanity competition! This M8 Competition is definitely much too interesting of course, but a grey 320d… that could do very well indeed!

Quick Cig

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LEGO’s new 42141 McLaren Formula 1 Race Car comes from a time when advertising dangerous things is no longer acceptable. Unless you’re Ferrari of course. Back in the ’80s and ’90s though, anything was OK.

Cue this giant packet of cigarettes, which – like the aforementioned LEGO set – isn’t based on one particular McLaren Formula 1 car, but rather is inspired by the Marlboro McLarens of the time.

It comes from apachaihapachai of Eurobricks, who has included a BuWizz bluetooth battery, and Buggy Motor to ensure his model has the speed to match the looks. Free building instructions are available and there’s more to see of apachai’s renders at the Eurobricks forum via the link above.

Prizes of Mundanity!

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BrickNerd & The Lego Car Blog’s

Festival of Mundanity Competition is Go!

That right, enough Lamborghinis, monster trucks and fighter jets for a bit, we want to see the most boring creations. The tedious. The unexceptional. The bland. White Toyota Corollas. A suburban street filled with identical grey crossovers. A tired minivan in a Wallmart parking lot.

But why build boring? Well firstly because boring can actually be very interesting (we’ve published more Ferrari’s here than we have Hondas), and secondly because there are some awesome prizes on offer for the winners, and they’re not mundane at all!

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The Prizes!

Yup, the incredible BuWizz 3.0 Pro bluetooth battery (or a 2.0 if preferred) is up for grabs! Able to control up to six motors, whilst delivering much more power, there is no way to make your Lego creations faster.

Programmable and controllable through your phone, the BuWizz 3.0 Pro can measure G-Force, acceleration and altitude, and enables full bluetooth remote control from up to 100m away.

We’ll let you know just how good the new BuWizz 3.0 Pro is in a full review due here soon, but even the original BuWizz 1.0’s ‘ludicrous mode’ blew our minds.

Find full BuWizz details here

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Now you can display your LEGO sets (or your own creations) with purpose-built clear acrylic angled stands designed to perfectly support Lego vehicles, with the winner collecting an iDisplayit bundle for a multitude of Technic and Creator-sized models. You could even proudly display your Festival of Mundanity winning creation!

Check out the extensive range of iDisplayit purpose-built LEGO stands and cases here

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The awesome guys over at Game of Bricks are giving not just the Festival of Mundanity winners, but the runners up too, the choice of any Game of Bricks lighting kit! And there are hundreds to choose from.

Architecture, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Modular Buildings, and – of course – Technic, Creator and Speed Champions vehicles, there are lighting kits for a huge variety of official LEGO sets, all of which are seamlessly integrated to spectacular effect.

See the full range of Game of Bricks lighting kits here

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And that’s not all!

BrickNerd will be adding a swag bag and LEGO gift cards into the prize pot, so the winner will be able to buy a new LEGO set, supercharge it with BuWizz, light it with Game of Bricks, and then showcase it courtesy of iDisplayit.

Remember that there are similar prizes over at BrickNerd too, who are eagerly waiting to see mundane objects built in brick, whilst we’ll be brining you the best mundane vehicular entries here at The Lego Car Blog.

Get boring, er… building, and Good Luck!

The (Very) Cold War

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It’s freezing cold here at TLCB Towers, but it’s not as cold as Siberia. Not even close. Which is where this amazing ZIL-E167 was designed to operate, in one of the harshest environments on the planet.

An idea explored for the Soviet military during the 1960s, the E167 featured six wheel drive, no suspension (but balloon tyres), two 7.0 V8 engines, the ability to cross water, and a five ton payload. That all sounds rather good to us, but production never progressed beyond one working prototype due to transmission issues.

Built by TLCB Master MOCer Sariel, this (nearly) mini-figure scale recreation of the Soviet-Era arctic explorer encapsulates the weird but deeply cool vehicle wonderfully, with BuWizz remote control drive on all six wheels, steering on four of them, and an enhancement to the real truck in the form of working suspension.

There’s more of this amazing machine to see at Sariel’s ‘ZIL-E167’ album on Flickr, plus you can watch it in action in the cold via the video below.

YouTube Video

Acceptable in the ’80s

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And the 2020s it seems, as the once fairly unfashionable Ferrari Testarossa is now a bonafide millionaires’ toy, worth much much more than the entire contents TLCB office car park.

This one comes from Technic-building legend Lachlan Cameron (aka LoxLego), whose Technic recreation of the ’80s supercar includes a full remote control drivetrain, LED lights, custom (and really rather accurate) wheels, working suspension, a flat-12 engine, pop-up headlights, and opening doors, front trunk and engine cover.

There’s much more of the build to see at the Eurobricks discussion forum and on Flickr, plus you can read Lachlan’s interview here at TLCB in the Master MOCers series by clicking here.

*Today’s title song.

MAZing Through the Snow

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We may not be the most professional, well connected, articulate, or competent Lego blog, but we sure do have the most tenuous Christmas titles!

Continuing the Christmassy nonsense is this, Danifill’s marvellous MAZ 5316 4×4 truck, complete with BuWizz power, Servo steering, remotely locking pneumatically-controlled differentials, live-axle suspension, a tilting cab, and working LED head and tail lights.

Danifill has taken his MAZ into the snow to show what it can do, and you can read more about the model and watch a video of it in action at the Eurobricks forum here.

The Grinch

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Green, ugly, and ruining beloved institutions, the Grinch and the Lamborghini Urus are, in this writer’s eyes, effectively the same thing.

Of course Lamborghini will sell more hateful Uruses than the rest of their range combined, such is the current automotive fashion, but this writer still violently dislikes every fibre of the damn thing.

Not so TLCB Master MOCer Lachlan Cameron (aka loxlego), who has recreated the automotive grinch in Technic form. And he has – begrudgingly – built an awesome model as a result.

Powered by the BuWizz 3.0 bluetooth battery, Lachlan’s Urus features remote control steering and all-wheel-drive, a V8 engine, working suspension, opening doors, hood and trunk, and – just like many real Urus customers, who somehow don’t consider Lamborghini’s travesty obnoxious enough – custom wheels and ‘carbon fibre’ bodywork accessories.

Further fantastic photography and a link to building instructions can be found at Lachlan’s Lamborghini Urus album on Flickr. Click the final link to see more of the vehicular Grinch, or those above to learn more about the builder of this model, and the excellent third-party battery that’s powering it.

Smushed

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It’s been a while since the last Elven smushing event. This is partly because TLCB Elves are marginally wiser these days, after years of running one another over, but mostly it’s because they hadn’t found a suitable vehicle. They did today.

This Technic Baja truck comes from Teo LEGO Technic, and it was discovered by one of our Elves on Eurobricks.

Lightweight, with independent front and live axle rear suspension, return-to-centre steering, and – importantly – Buggy Motor propulsion with BuWizz power, Teo’s Baja truck is a fast, agile, and easily capable of bouncing over a moderate number of fleeing TLCB Elves.

Which is of course exactly what happened when the Elf that found it returned to TLCB Towers.

We now have to remember the optimum sequence of cleaning products for the removal Elf blood and vomit from the office carpet, so whilst we do that you can check out more of Teo’s truck at both the Eurobricks discussion forum and the extensive Brickshelf gallery. Click the links above to make the jump.

Spania GTA Spano

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What? Yes, us too, but apparently the Spania GTA Spano is Spain’s hypercar, and with 925bhp on tap, it’s quite a potent one.

This incredible Technic recreation of the GTA Spano first appeared here yesterday, when BuWizz used it to reach 181mph (we may have adjusted that for scale), and in doing so set a record for the fastest 1:8 scale Technic car.

The builder responsible for this amazing record-breaking model is Zerobricks of Eurobricks, who has now revealed further details and imagery of the spectacular engineering behind it.

No less than ten BuWizz motors power the 3D-printed rear wheels to deliver that awesome top speed, whilst five LEGO Powered-Up motors power the rear spoiler, steering, opening doors, and V10 piston engine.

All-wheel independent suspension, plus an opening hood, engine cover and rear trunk also feature, and there’s more to see of this astonishing build at the Eurobricks discussion forum by clicking here, and you can watch the model in action at 181mph (kinda) by clicking here.

181mph* LEGO Supercar

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*Kinda. This is the Spania GTA Spano, a 925bhp, 400km/h supercar power by a twin-turbocharged version of the V10 engine found in the Dodge/SRT Viper.

Well, except this one isn’t of course, being only an eighth of the size. No, this Technic version is powered by something rather different…

First the model, which was engineered via CAD and is constructed from 3,800 LEGO pieces. Far from a lightweight shell, the 1:8 scale GTA Spano includes opening doors, active aerodynamics, working suspension, remote controlled steering, and 3D-printed wheels to ensure they’re up to the job.

That ‘job’, is to handle the power of ten BuWizz propulsion motors, coordinated through three BuWizz 3.0 Pro controllers (plus a further five motors powering other functions), with the aim of setting the record for the fastest 1:8 scale LEGO car.

BuWizz’s 1:8 scale GTA Spano powered its way to 36.5km/h, which when factored up for scale equates to 292km/h (181mph)! That might be little way off the real GTA Spano’s 400km/h top speed, but it was enough to secure the record.

BuWizz took their record-breaking model to meet its real-life counterpart (and the man behind it), and you can watch that meeting, the record attempt, and the amazing design process required to produce a 181mph Technic Supercar via the excellent video below.

Plus if you’d like to see how fast your Technic models will go, check out BuWizz by clicking here.

The Joy of the Unexceptional

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We love the unexceptional here at The Lego Car Blog. McLarens, Lamborghinis and Porsches are all very exciting, but we sometimes prefer to celebrate the ordinary. (Maybe we’ll run a building competition to that end one day…)

Ironically, due their uninterestingness, ordinary cars are rarely built by the online Lego Community, which understandably prefers to build things of a more exciting nature. More ironically, ageing every-day cars are probably now rarer in the real world than the aforementioned exotica, which in our eyes makes them much more interesting. We’d certainly pay a 1980s Toyota Corolla station wagon (if ever we saw one) more attention than we would a modern Aston Martin.

And so it is on these pages today, where we’re eschewing brick-built exotica for said 1980s family estate car, with its 1.6 litre engine and well under 100bhp.

This wonderful Technic recreation of the TE70-series Toyota Corolla comes from Danifill of Eurobricks, who has captured the mundane exterior brilliantly in brick-form. Underneath is brilliant too, as a LEGO Buggy Motor, Servo Motor, and third-party BuWizz bluetooth battery provide the model with remote control drive and steering, and a surprising turn of speed.

There’s lots more to see of Danifill’s celebration of the unexceptional at the Eurobricks forum via the link above, plus you can watch the model in action via the video below. Take a look whilst we ponder a possible building contest…

YouTube Video

Royal Württemberg

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This is not a car. It is in fact a Prussion G12 steam locomotive, depicted here in Royal Württemberg livery (and in a wonderful snowy scene) by Flickr’s Pieter Post.

Around 1,500 G12’s were built between 1917 and 1924, when it became one of the first standardised locomotives in operation across Germany.

Pieter’s beautiful recreation of the G12 utilises a slew of third-party parts to maximise the realism, with custom valve gear, tender wheels, LED lighting, and a BuWizz bluetooth battery powering the LEGO L-Motor that drives the wheels.

The result is – as you can see here – spectacular, and you can check out the full description of both Pieter’s Prussian G12 build and the real steam locomotive at his photostream.

Click the link above to take a winter’s journey across 1920’s Germany.

Phlattening Phoenix

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It was a peaceful morning here at TLCB Towers. Some Elves were quietly watching cartoons, some TLCB Writers were… er, quietly watching cartoons, and all was well with the world.

And then a BuWizz-powered truck ran a load of them over. Elves you understand, not Writers.

Built by Eurobricks’ blaz62, this monstrous Tatra Phoenix trial truck made easy work smushing our smelly little workers, thanks to twin motors, fully independent suspension, and six-wheel-drive.

The Elf at the controls was clearly enjoying itself, but fortunately we were on hand to promptly pick up the creation in question and end the violence, much to its annoyance.

A closer inspection of the model revealed modular construction, opening doors, and – for a Technic creation at least – a kinda detailed interior, but with a trial truck it’s really all about how the model drives.

Whilst we conduct some arduous ‘testing’ to determine this, you can see more of blaz62’s excellent all-wheel-drive Phoenix at the Eurobricks discussion via the link above, plus you can check out the creation in action via the video below.

YouTube