Tag Archives: Construction

Tips Welcome

We like workhorsey-type vehicles here at The Lego Car Blog. This is perhaps because, whilst we frequently blog Ferraris and Lamborghinis, we’re rather far removed from those in the real world; this writer’s current vehicle is an office chair held together by duct tape.

Cue mpj’s excellent little Iveco Eurocargo tipper truck, which is about as unpretentious a Technic model as it’s possible to get. No motors, no bluetooth remote control, no V12 engine. Just mechanical steering, a tipping load bed operated by hand-turning an axle, and dropping sides so the load can tip out. Marvellous.

It’d make a fine official Technic set, and there’s more to see at mpj’s ‘Iveco Eurocargo Tipper Truck’ gallery on Brickshelf. Click the link above for a good tip.

Grab Some Wood

This giant claw with a vehicle attached to it is a Volvo L180HL, a front-loader-based machine designed for moving logs. Lots of them.

This brilliant Technic recreation of the log-grabbing Volvo is the work of Akassin of Eurobricks, who built it for a recent Technic competition in which it took the silver medal.

A wealth of mechanical and pneumatic functions accurately replicate the real machine, with articulated steering, an enormous (and rather clever) two-piece boom powered by compressed air, plus a mechanical claw that’s able to grab bundles of ‘logs’.

It’s a hugely impressive creation with much more to see at the Eurobricks forum, and via the excellent video below. Grab some wood via the links.

YouTube Video

Tiny Trakker

Small scale, but enormously detailed, Damian Z.’s creations are firm favourites here at TLCB Towers.

His latest, an Iveco EuroTrakker tipper truck, is a perfect example of his prowess. There are ‘working’ stabiliser legs, an ingenious four-stage folding Palfinger crane, and a two-way tipper, all constructed from standard System parts.

Damian’s presentation is beautiful too, and there’s lots more of the build to see at his ‘Iveco EuroTrakker’ album on Flickr. Click the link above to see just how good small scale can be…

360° Digging

This marvellous contraption is a Hydrema 614 360° backhoe, as constructed brilliantly for a Eurobricks building competition by MP LEGO Technic Creations.

Pneumatically powered front a rear excavator arms can be pressurised via the exhaust stack, there’s mechanical articulated steering, linear actuator folding support legs, and a recreation of the Hydrema’s party-piece; a 360° rotating cab, allowing the driver an unobstructed view as they smash the backhoe bucket through a water-main.

It’s an expertly engineered creation that could make a superb official LEGO set, and there are more images of MP’s Hydrema 614 360° to see on Flickr via the link above, further build details are available in the build discussion topic at the Eurobricks forum, and you can watch all of the model’s working features in action via the video below.

YouTube Video

What a Knob

A lot of knobs. No, not TLCB Staff, nor the summation of your Mom’s summer, but this properly mechanical Technic skid-steer excavator by Flickr’s Thirdwigg.

There are knobs for the boom arm, knobs for the bucket, knobs for the blade, knobs for the turntable rotation, and very possibly other knobs we’ve not spotted too.

It’s a wonderful reminder of old-school mechanised Technic, and you can see more of all the knobs in question at Thirdwigg’s ‘Skid Excavator’ album on Flickr. Click the link above for more knobs in one place than your Mom’s beach-house parties.

Remotely Rolling

Seemingly the perfect creation for the Elves to use to flatten one-another, this remote control road roller was gleefully found by one of their number. Unfortunately for the Elf in question, Vladimir Drozd‘s model turned out to be much too slow to squash anyone, and it simply trundled serenely around TLCB Towers before the Elf at the controls abandoned it in disgust.

We like it though, and not just because there’s no cleaning up to do. The model includes remote control drive and articulate steering, a wonderfully detailed exterior, and top notch presentation, and there’s more to see at Vladimir’s photostream. Click the the link above to go remotely rolling.

In the End*

There’s are many types of loader. The ‘backhoe loader‘, the ‘front loader‘, and what we have here; the ‘end loader’. They largely seem interchangeable to us, but the difference between them appears to be from where they do their, er… stuff; forking, shovelling, drilling and so forth. You don’t get that kind of technical analysis at The Brothers Brick…

This one, built by previous bloggee Wigboldy (aka Thirdwigg) is an ‘end loader’, as it does its stuff from the end of a front-mounted arm, which is mechanically raisable via linear actuators.

The implement mounted on the end is also tiltable via a linear actuator, and can be interchanged between the fork pictured here and a digging bucket, plus there’s articulated steering too.

There’s more of Wigboldy’s excellent creation to see at his ‘End Loader’ album on Flickr, where images of both implements in use can be found – click the link above to get to the end.

*Today’s title song.

Fork This

We all need a little lift now and again, and that’s what we have here. Built in ‘Miniland’ scale, newcomer Joey Klusnick‘s Hyster forklift captures the real deal brilliantly, alongside which it’s pictured too. Fork your way over to Flickr for all the photos.

Conclusion of Mundanity

Judging the near one-hundred entries submitted to BrickNerd and TLCB’s Festival of Mundanity is underway, but before we reveal the winners there’s time for a few entries that snuck in before the deadline.

First up, and managing to span both the ‘Object’ and ‘Vehicle’ categories, is Caleb Flutur‘s ‘3x Upscale 6654’. “A mundane set, in a mundane theme, from a mundane year” to quote Caleb, his digital super-sized 6654 doesn’t just inflate the scale of the model, but each individual brick used in its creation.

A monumentally clever undertaking, this competition entry is both appropriately mundane and fascinating in its construction. With Caleb vowing to build his design in real super-sized bricks soon, we’ve never been so intrigued by something so dull. Big points.

Equally clever yet unexciting is Sberwing007’s Festival of Mundanity entry, that most forgotten of vehicles; the scissor-lift.

Not just a dull machine, but a dull machine designed to enable dull tasks, Saberwing’s Technic scissor lift captures the dreariness of the real thing beautifully, including its operation, with working tight-radius steering, an extending platform, and – of course – a linear actuator operated lifting mechanism.

There’s more to see of Saberwing007’s scissor lift at both Flickr and the Eurobricks discussion forum, where further details and images of the creation’s really rather clever mechanisms can also be found.

Click the links above to complete such boring tasks as changing a lightbulb, de-leafing the gutter, and removing that dead pigeon from the air-conditioning duct.

Before we sign-off our final Festival of Mundanity post prior to the Winner’s Announcement (and a review of the awesome BuWizz 3.0 Pro prize on offer), here’s a secret bonus link to an entry which recreated the most boring vehicle of all time. Every single one of us will have ridden in this vehicle, multiple times, and yet we’ve never once thought about it. Maximum mundane points!

Komatsu Krusher

This TLCB Writer was having a peaceful day scrolling through the delightfully tedious entries our Festival of Mundanity competition in collaboration with BrickNerd. There’s a bar of soap, a rental car lot, a white Toyota Corolla… and the sound of Elven screaming. Sigh.

A wearisome trudge to the corridor revealed the culprit, and the vehicle under their jurisdiction; this huge BuWizz-powered Komatsu HM300 6×6 articulated dump truck.

Discovered on Brickshelf by the jubilant Elf at the controls, gkurkowski‘s creation had churned several of our smelly little workers into the carpet, before – admittedly rather cleverly – deploying the linear actuator controlled tipper to dump a load of glitter on them. How it got into the stationary cupboard we’re not sure. And why is there even glitter in there anyway?

Whatever the reasons, the result is a very sparkly mess, which this writer now has the pleasure of tidying up.

Whilst he gets on with that you can check out gkurkowski’s seriously impressive build at the Brickshelf gallery, which includes extensive imagery, renders, close-ups of the 6×6 drivetrain and tipping mechanisms, plus a link to building instructions should you wish to create the Komatsu HM300 at home.

Click the link above to make the jump and here to read more about the awesome third-party BuWizz bluetooth battery that’s powering it

Surprise Squashing

‘Huh…’ thought this TLCB Writer as he entered the office today. The cause of the casual surprise was a weird yellow vehicle, trundling up and down the corridor with a gaggle of happy Elves in the back.

Seasoned readers of this crumbing ruin in the corner of the internet will know such peaceful interaction between TLCB Elves is seldom seen. The Elf at the controls was smiling, the Elves in the back were smiling, and for a moment we thought that 2022 could be the dawning of a harmonious new era for our little workers.

Was it balls.

The Elf at the controls, knowing its find was too slow to mete out any smushings, had ingeniously offered its colleagues rides in the back. After a joyful excursion around the TLCB Towers the aforementioned little psychopath then deployed the model’s tipping bed, tumbling its Elven cargo onto the ground before immediately reversing over them.

To compound the smushing it then spun the vehicle on top of those trapped underneath via the skid steer system, smearing quite a few into rather artful arcs in the carpet.

Of course the controls were swiftly were taken away, a meal token and yellow Smartie begrudgingly awarded, and the victims either patched up on site or taken to the ‘Elf Hospital‘, depending upon their triage assessment.

We’re really not sure how we’re going to get all the Elf bits out of the office carpet, so whilst we figure that out you can check out Arie’s Morooka MST 2200VD tracked dumper with SBrick control, twin L Motor drive/skid-steer, and linear-actuator operated tipper at both Eurobricks and Bricksafe.

Perhaps we should install lino.

Monotone Mixer

We’ve nearly reached our Christmas closedown here at The Lego Car Blog, but we still have time for a few more creations before we turn off the lights and get drunk.

This one has amused us immensely, being perhaps the single least Christmassy creation that it’s possible to conceive.

The gloriously grey Volvo FM12 cement mixing truck pictured here comes from regular bloggee Damian Z. (aka thietmaier), who has applied his usual brilliant attention to detail to create a model that looks much, much larger than it actually is.

It’s also wonderfully mundane, and we like that. Because we’re weird. Weird enough to encourage more boring builds in 2022…

Was that a hint for a ginormous 2022 Building Competition?…

Moving on, there’s more to see of Damian’s excellent Volvo FM12 cement mixer truck at his photostream – click the link in the text above to jump into the mix.

Scania, Hamm & Vogele

The title of this post may sound like a 1970s supergroup, or an elaborate sandwich, but it is in fact a trio of models (or quad if we include the trailer) from Keko007. Which has made today’s discovering Elf very happy (and soon to be very full) indeed.

Keko’s Hamm mini-roller, Vogele 1803-02, um… thingumy, and Scania S730 truck with low-loader trailer are all brilliantly built, with a wealth of clever techniques capturing each vehicle beautifully in miniature.

There’s lots more of Keko’s superbly-presented road-laying combo to see at his ‘Scania S730 & Hamm & Vogele’ album on Flickr – click the link above to take a look. Unless this really was an elaborate sandwich all along.

Have a Hino

Like cars, trucks seem to amass popularity geographically. TLCB’s home nation is full of white DAFs, the forests of Malaysia are filled with the diesel fumes of ancient Mercedes-Benz ’round bonnets’, and much of East Asia seems to be only populated by Toyota’s Hino haulers.

This is one comes from Marco Gan, replicating one of the countless Hino trucks used to transport just about everything across the continent. Accurate details and a working tipper make this worth a closer look, and you can do just that at Marco’s ‘Hino Truck’ album via the link above.

Twiddling Knobs

We like a good knob twiddle* here at The Lego Car Blog. Get your minds out of the gutter – we’re talking hand-powered mechanical functions.

This is one such creation imbued with knob twiddling goodness, and it comes from previous bloggee M_Longer, who has repurposed the pieces found within the LEGO Technic 42121 Heavy Duty Excavator set to create it.

Loosely based on a JCB skid-steer loader, M_Longer’s 42121 alternate utilises a pair of knobs to mechanically control the arm and attachment tilt, so you’ll need to play with the knobs a bit before you can get forking. Ask your Mom.

There’s more of M-Longer’s B-Model to see at the Eurobricks discussion forum, where links to both further images and to building instructions can also be found. Twiddle your knob via the link above!

*Except in this case. As it’s ridiculous.