It’s FebRovery, and this is an ‘NTERRA B400 MEGA HAULER’, the latest in industrial grade multi-directional rovers from the [ S E /\ Z Y ] corporation.
Able to service an entire moderately-sized colony*, the NTERRA B400 can take a gigantic load*, thanks to an enormous tilting deck with a 300 ton payload capacity and its ‘revolving mecanum wheels’.
Rendered in Bricklink Studio 2.0 with considerable post-production enhancement, [ S E /\ Z Y ]’s gargantuan design shows what’s possible when taking digital building to the extreme, and there’s more to see of his moon-based monster-mover on Flickr via the link above.
Alternatively, if enormous digital creations aren’t your thing, here’s a brick-built FebRovery entry of a similar aesthetic that’s altogether smaller…
LEGO’s vintage space theme M-Tron is still going strong. Not with LEGO themselves of course, but within the Lego Community, who are taking the theme to scales never imagined back in the early 1990s.
This is Havoc’s ‘M-Tron Crawler’, a frankly ridiculously-sized twelve wheel mobile command centre complete with over a dozen magnetised cargo pieces, including several vehicles that back in 1993 could have been LEGO M-Tron sets in their own right.
Three magnetised cranes can hoist the various spacey accompaniments onto the Crawler’s roof, whilst a cargo bay at the rear can transport the assortment of smaller vehicles within.
The complete Crawler looks like every LEGO space fan from 1993’s dream – if only they had the pieces – and there’s a whole heap more to see at Havoc’s ‘Crawler’ album on Flickr. Click the link above to make the jump!
This is the NASA ‘Launch Umbilical Tower’, designed to send the world’s most powerful machine – the Saturn V rocket – into space, and carried by the world’s heaviest land vehicle.
LEGO’s enormous 92176 NASA Saturn V set has allowed space fans to conduct their own bedroom-based lunar missions, but the ‘blast-off’ bit (in this writer’s opinion, the coolest bit) requires a few additional accessories not supplied by LEGO…
That expansive parts supply has enabled Jano to equip his B-B-B-Model with a huge array of motorised functions, including drive and steering, crane rotation, retractable support swing-arms, and even a working lift within the tower!
It’s an incredible creation and one that (in simplified form below) you can build for yourself, as building instructions are available. There’s more of Jano’s amazing NASA Crawler and Tower to see – including a video of the model’s motorised and mechanical functions – at the Eurobricks forum. Click the link above and prepare to blast-off!
The annual sci-fi bandwagon that is Febrovery is upon us! Our Elves have found two Febrovery entries to share today, the first of which appears to be staffed by highly intelligent squirrels.
Flickr’s Miro Dudas explains that the Neptunian Utility Transport Services (N.U.T.S.) have got themselves a new crawler to support their appetite for oversized acorns (which grow upon and must be harvested from the Neptunian moon of Triton). A team of four hardworking Squirelites named Sandy, Andy, Mandy and Randy operate the crawler and the supporting harvesting machinery collecting the acorns which are blown far and wide due to the strong Neptunian winds. A risky business, the team of four Squirelites were apparently last seen a year ago… Right, stop that! It’s silly. Now let’s see something decent, and military.
Andreas Lenander‘s classic space rover may not be military exactly, but it does make fantastic use of LEGO’s otherwise pointless X-Pod piece, and there are no squirrels to be seen anywhere. Unless they’re in that box. A fearless classic spacewomen is ready to load the cargo into the back of the rover which is sure to make it home thanks to those nifty brick-built tracks. See more of the X-Rover and a box that may or may not be filled with four long-dead squirrels at Andreas’ photostream via the link above.
Sariel’s latest creation sure looks tough to squash. Not so our Elves, who are famously easy to smush into the office carpet. It’s been a while since the last Elven flattening, but fear not readers – today Elf-on-Elf violence returned in a big way.
With all-wheel-drive powered by two XL Motors geared for rock-crawling Sariel’s latest build wouldn’t normally be fast enough to claim any victims. Add in a third-party BuWizz battery and bluetooth receiver combo though, and up to eight times more power than LEGO’s own system can be delivered to the motors.
The aggressively low gearing still caps the top speed at a lowly figure mind, but if an Elf were to quietly sneak out of the cage room while its colleagues were seated around the old TV watching Transformers cartoons, and return at the controls of this, there really wouldn’t be much chance of escape.
Sigh. We now have some clearing up to do and a jubilant Elf needs a meal token reward (not for the smushing, just the find), so we’ll hand you over to Sariel’s photostream for all the photos. Click the link to take a look at his monster bug.
The Space Programme has, by a wide margin, produced the fastest vehicles on (and off) Earth. This spectacular recreation of the Kennedy Space centre, complete with beautifully integrated lighting, comes from Lia Chan of Flickr, and it features both the retired Space Shuttle and its SLS replacement. Lia’s huge build first appeared here last year, and has now been re-photographed to capture the creation at night. There’s a whole lot more to see at Lia’s photostream – click here to get ready to launch.
It’s been a slow (read ‘hungry’) week for The Lego Car Blog Elves. However, with their empty stomachs ‘motivating’ them it was only a matter of time before we’d have a creation to share with you.
The hungry Elf responsible for today’s find was duly awarded a meal token and Smartie, upon which something remarkable happened… the Elf ate about half of its Smartie, and it then proceeded to break the rest into pieces. Were we about to witness the first ever moment of Elven compassion and sharing? Were we balls.
The aforementioned Elf scattered the Smartie pieces opposite a curtain in the office and then scurried off. Soon several of its colleagues had sniffed out the unguarded confectionary and landed on the abandoned loot like seagulls on an open bin.
But unguarded the confectionary wasn’t, and the curtains suddenly parted as a huge white truck powered through them. The nearest Elf had just enough time to point and scream before being squashed forcefully into the office carpet, before its scavenging colleagues met the same fate.
A jubilant Elf then re-emerged, scooped up the Smartie remnants, and ran off cackling madly. Sigh. We thought they were getting bored of this.
Still, kudos the Elf in question, which had deployed some remarkable inventiveness to overcome its find’s lack of speed – which normally would have left it unable meet out any smushings.
The vehicular weapon, whilst slow, is a mighty impressive bit of kit though. Based on a Volvo FMX truck, the build features five Power Functions motors that power the four-wheel-drive system, generate air pressure for pneumatically locking differentials, and drive the centrally-pivoted steering, whilst pendular suspension with simply ludicrous articulation and oversize tyres from the 42054 Claas Xerion tractor set take care of truck’s impressive rock-crawling ability.
The build is the work of TLCB debutant dgustafsson1317 and there’s an enormous gallery of high quality images available to view on Flickr. Click the link above to see all of the Volvo FMX Crawler photos, whilst we scrape some very flat Elves out of the office carpet.
The Lego Car Blog reviewing Anorak, hanging nerdily for a short while, has today been removed from the office coat-rack and thrust at one of you for another Reader Review! Doubling his chances in the ongoing Review My Set Competition is Marco. qm of MOCpages, who adds another set to the Set Review Library. Over to Marco…
The 9398 4×4 Crawler, around $200 when I bought it, and it looked great on the shelves at the shop. A little expensive? Not really, it comes with 2L motors, a Servo motor, a battery pack and the signal receiver with the controller. Plus another 1,321 pieces.
The set comes in a big grey box, containing many different bags filled with bricks, the building instructions, and nothing more. It’s definitely not the box of the 42056 Porsche 911 Gt3.
Building 9398 you start with the chassis – as always in Technic sets – adding the two L motors for power to all four wheels and the Servo motor for steering at both the front and back of the vehicle. However after a time you’ll notice that the gear ratios are aggressively slow, which some builders won’t like, and for such a big set there is no V8 engine… in fact there is no engine at all! Even the little 8256 set has an engine! If mechanical functions are your thing then unfortunately 9398 will prove disappointing.
On to the looks of the set, where things don’t get much better. 9398 resembles a modern El Camino monster truck, yet looks neither strong nor powerful, more like a graffiti artist has spray painted Barbie’s Jeep. Not good. (Agreed! Ed.)
OK, let’s stop talking about all the bad stuff. 9398 is the type of LEGO set which is useful if you’re the kind of builder that buys sets for the parts, where it is a good investment. With multiple electric components and those great-looking (and huge) tyres that are under-utilised here, there’s plenty to pilfer for your own creations. Continue reading →
This weird-looking device is apparently a Crawler-Grabber, and we suppose it is, seeing as it both crawls and grabs. It’s the work of TLCB favourite Nico71, and it can lift a TLCB Elf surprisingly high into the air before dropping it into the toilet. Don’t worry, we didn’t press the flush.
Controlled remotely via LEGO’s Power Functions system, Nico’s creation is able to drive, skid steer, and elevate and extend the boom. It looks a bit like one of those RC bomb disposal robots and as such we may well put it to use removing Elf droppings from the Cage Room. Whilst we get cleaning you can see more on Brickshelf – click here to grab a look.
Another day and another Elf successfully returns to TLCB Towers. Today’s find is the work of Stari89, and it’s quite a cleverly engineered creation. Featuring remote control all-wheel-drive and all-wheel-steering, a flat-4 ‘boxer’ engine, live axle suspension, and opening gull-wing doors, Stari’s stealthy black ‘Trial Crawler’ includes as many features as LEGO’s own version. There’s lots more to see, including some great chassis photos, via Eurobricks and Brickshelf.
This incredible vehicle is NASA’s Crawler Transporter, built to carry the enormous Saturn rockets, and later the Space Shuttles, to their launch site. Built way back in 1965 (although upgraded several times since then), the Crawler is the largest self-propelled land vehicle in the world, weighing in at over 2,700 tons. It’s powered by two 2,750bhp V16 diesel engines, with another two 1,065bhp engine/generators used for steering, ventilation and jacking… Oh, plus sixteen traction motors powered by four 1,341bhp generators. That’s a lot of power, which when deployed together gives the NASA Crawler a top speed of… 2mph. Or half that when loaded.
So fast it isn’t, but amazing it certainly is, and this spectacular Lego recreation of one of NASA’s most remarkable machines is a fine tribute to the real-world goliath. Built by Lia Chan it’s detailed to a stunning level, and includes a shuttle and booster rocket load too. There’s lots more to see at Lia’s Flickr photostream – click the link above to blast off.
The title of this post might be from a fairly dreadful horror movie, but the creation it captions is rather excellent. Flickr’s Moko is a previous bloggee and he returns to TLCB with this simple yet delightful Classic Space crawler, complete with individually articulated tracks and a rear-mounted communication dish (this is Classic Space – no ray guns here!). See more at Moko’s photostream via the link above.
Toyota’s FJ40 Land Cruiser is something of an automotive legend, and it’s been well represented by the Lego Community over the years. Regular bloggee Madoca 1977’s latest build expands on one of these previous Land Cruiser creations and takes the classic Japanese 4×4 into the Crawler / Truck Trial arena.
With 4-wheel-drive powered by a single XL Motor, Servo Motor steering, a remotely operated 2-speed gearbox, working headlights, a powered winch, an on-board rechargeable battery, and SBrick mobile-device control, Madoca’s creation is a throughly capable off-road machine. It also looks – as you can see above – absolutely brilliant.
There are more details and images available at the Eurobricks forum here, plus you can see Madoca’s FJ40 Crawler in action via the video below.
This ultra-lightweight 4×4 Technic crawler is not a looker. But is is very capable. With just one XL motor for drive, White Shapes‘ ‘4-Links Mini-Crawler’ can climb almost anything. Suggested by a reader you can see more on MOCpages at the link above, and via the video below.
The LEGO Company make almost everything you could ever need when building your own creation. From electric motors to infrared receivers to suspension components, there is a huge back-catalogue of parts available to allow your model to do nearly anything you wish it to. Nearly…
We’re breaking our own house rules with this post, as today’s creation is not quite entirely LEGO, but it shows the level of awesomeness that our favourite Danish toy can achieve when combined with a few well-chosen third-party products.
So, let’s get them out of the way; this monstrous replica of Tim Cameron’s 700bhp rock crawler ‘Showtime’ by the brilliant SevenStuds is fitted with non-LEGO tyres, a non-LEGO control system and (technically) non-LEGO bodywork.
Those tyres are Interco IROK 1.55s – as found in the RC 4×4 racing scene – mounted on official LEGO Technic wheels, and they give SevenStuds’ Showtime incredible traction. This traction is needed because the chassis contains four LEGO Power Functions XL motors, one for each wheel, and a servo motor that provides all-wheel-steering.
These five motors are controlled by two third-party SBrick units, allowing Showtime to be driven and steered with moderation; The motors aren’t limited to being ‘on’ or ‘off’ as per LEGO’s own IR receiver, but can be graduated between the two via bluetooth to a mobile device.
Lastly, the bodywork is made from non-LEGO pneumatic hosing, but only because LEGO’s own offering is not available in red.
These additions compliment a fully LEGO chassis complete with four-wheel-drive, four-wheel-steering, four-link suspension and portal hubs, and make Showtime one of the most capable off-road creations that this site has ever featured.
You can read all the details on SevenStuds’ build at the Eurobricks discussion forum here, plus you can see what it can do via the superbly produced video below.*
YouTube Video:
*After watching this TLCB office is immeasurably relieved that we got hold of this creation before the Elves did. Imagine the carnage…
