If ever there was in image that went ‘Bwushhhhh!’, this is it. Constructed by keiichi kamei, this fantastic ‘Spinner’ police hovercar take-off captures life on the streets of Blade Runner’s dystopian Los Angeles brilliantly. Thirty-eight LED lights add to the ambiance and there’s more of this superb scene to see at keiichi’s photostream. Click the link above to take off.
This is an MAN Lion articulated bus, created in Technic by Fosapifi of Eurobricks, and in place of the usual nonsense we write on these pages, this post is mostly an almost unfathomably long list. Because Fosapifi’s model is as complicated – and has as much hidden from view – as Trump’s tax returns.
Firstly the bus is remotely driven, with four Power Functions XL Motors driving the third axle. A Servo steers the front axle, and there are eight sets of LEDs illuminating the lights.
Two separate pneumatic systems, each self-compressed by individual Power Functions L Motors, power the doors and air-suspension, allowing the bus to ‘kneel’ at the kerb for passenger embark/disembarkation. A total of twenty-two pneumatic cylinders (plus ten shock absorbers) are built into the suspension, controlled via Servo, whilst another Servo and six further cylinders operates the doors, the second and third of which can be deactivated via a switch in the cab.
Finally, a Micro-Motor unfolds the wheelchair ramp, with all the above controlled remotely via four SBricks and a BuWizz Bluetooth battery, with all of it hidden away to allow for a complete bus interior.
No we don’t know how it’s possible either, but you can join us having our minds bent at the Eurobricks forum via the link above, where a video and a link to building instructions can also be found.
This neat Technic tipper truck was discovered by one of our Elves today, and they’ve all had great fun sliding down the raising tipping load bed. Flickr’s JLiu15 is the builder, and has included Power Functions motors, LED lights, a working miniature piston engine under an opening hood, and the aforementioned linear-actuator powered slide tipping bucket. See more at JLiu15’s ‘Classic Dump Truck’ album via the link.
Today’s creation is not a car, which means we’re well out of our depth. But, despite not knowing which way the wind is blowing, even we can see just how swell this magnificent 72-gun pirate galleon by Flickr’s Robert4168/Garmadon is.
To parrot a few stats from Robert, the ‘Buccaneer’s Dread’ measures 165 studs from rudder to bowsprit, 58 studs crossbeam, 170 studs tall, is crewed by 36 mini-figures (including obligatory skeletons), and features over 85 LED lights from third-party specialists Lightailing.
Robert’s voyage to complete the ‘Buccaneer’s Dread’ took three years, and the finished model is now up for sale, with much more of this piratical masterpiece available to view at his photostream. Sea dogs, buccaneers, freebooters, hearties and swashbucklers set sail via the link above!
*One hundred doubloons if you can spy all the piratical puns.
This astounding creation is a Volvo FH16 750, and it’s one of the finest Technic creations of the year so far.
Packed with working functions, it took builder blaz62 over two years to complete, with a remote control 8×6 drivetrain linked to an inline-6 engine that resides under a fully suspended cab, all-wheel suspension, LED lights, working front, middle and rear outriggers, and an incredible three-stage folding ‘knuckle boom’ crane.
Based on the Palfinger PK 165.002 TEC 7 crane (ah yes, that one. Ed.), blaz62’s amazing feat of engineering can unfurl (via much knob twiddling) to reveal a three-stage first boom, with a further second two-stage jib and third single-stage jib thereafter. It offers 360° of rotation, a 400g payload, and a reach longer than a 1983 Monty Python sketch.
Building instructions are available and there’s much more to see at the Eurobricks discussion forum and Blaz62’s ‘Volvo FH16’ Bricksafe album.
Technic Supercars are one of our very favourite things in the Lego Community, and despite LEGO’s foray into officially-licensed replicas of real-world vehicles, we do still like seeing interpretations of the fictional Technic Supercars that used to be LEGO’s flagships.
Cue this rather lovely example by IA Creations, whose fictional supercar nods to several real-world counterparts as well as LEGO’s own past flagship sets, and includes a wealth of Technic functionality.
Working suspension, opening doors, front trunk and engine cover, LED lights, and a V8 engine all feature, with IA going a step further by including full remote control drive and steering, plus an electronically deployed rear spoiler, courtesy of four Power Functions motors and a BuWizz 2.0 bluetooth battery brick.
It’s a fantastic build and one of which you can see more at both Eurobricks, where a link to building instructions can be found, and Bricksafe, where over forty high quality images are available.
Click the links above to see more of IA Creations’ super car.
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!
Is this post mostly an excuse to link to one of The Simpsons’ greatest ever songs? Yes. Yes it is.
But the model’s good too.
Eurobricks mihao has created this superbly engineered remote control garbage truck (or ‘bin lorry’ to us here at TLCB), complete with motorised drive and steering, a tilting cab, suspension, piston engine, tipping garbage compactor, and – most ingeniously – a side-mounted garbage can (‘wheelie bin’) arm that grabs, raises and tips said receptacle automatically.
Have we been using this to grab TLCB Elves and tip them upside-down for fun? Yes. Yes we have. Because the garbage man can! See more at Eurobricks via the link.
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.
It’s Christmas, the time of family, giving, food, and – most importantly, if this TLCB writer’s better half is to be believed – twinkly lights.
An industry devoted to lighting up LEGO sets has boomed in recent times, with many lighting kits for official LEGO sets already reviewed here at The Lego Car Blog.
But good as some of these kits are, what lights us up is builders designing their own creations. It’s what LEGO is all about, and yet there hasn’t been a product allowing builders to easily light up their own vehicular designs. So we asked LEGO lighting specialists Lightailing to make one…
This is what they sent us, the Lightailing Light Starter Kit, containing a power source (USB or coin-cell batteries), two expansion boards, connecting cables, and two bright white LEDs, two red LEDs, and a white self-adhesive strip light, all neatly packaged using the components readily available from Lightailing’s other kits.
So is the Lightailing Light Starter Kit any good, and what creation did we light up? Read on to find out! Continue reading
LEGO like distribution trucks in their Town/City range. With generic ‘Cargo’ branding and the blandest of styling, they’re… well, perfect actually.
However the Technic and Model Team ranges, which lean more towards supercars and excitingly yellow pieces of construction equipment, tend to omit such workhorses from their line-ups.
Cue Eurobricks’ designer-han, who has decided to right that wrong with this; his fully remote control distribution truck, complete with generic ‘Cargo’ branding and the blandest of styling. And it’s fantastic.
Han’s creation includes remote control drive and steering, a motorised tilting cabin (under which sits a working V8 engine with spinning fans), LED lights front and rear, and – most importantly – a brilliant working tail-lift.
Powered by two L Motors, Han’s tail-lift opens the cargo area, drops parallel to the ground, and lowers to allow an exciting array of ‘Cargo’ (in this case Duplo bricks) to be easily loaded.
It’s well worth a closer look and you can do just that at the Eurobricks forum via the link above, where further details, a video of the truck in action, and a link to building instructions can all be found.
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.
The Elves therefore, are riding around in the back. A few have inevitably been run over, but for the most part it’s good clean fun.
Jakub’s model conceals its remote controlness well, with the only clue visible being if the brown box is removed from the bed, and the model also features opening doors (revealing a beautifully constructed interior), dropping tailgate, opening hood, LED lights, working suspension, and a high/low gearbox.
It’s a top quality build that’s worth a closer look, and you can do just that via Jakub’s photostream at the link above, where more imagery and a link to a YouTube video can also be found.
This is a Bateman Assault Bridge Carrier, an experimental tank-bridge-laying-combo based on the excellently-named ‘Medium Dragon’ Mk.1 artillery tractor that was trialled by the British Royal Engineers in 1926.
It’s one of the more obscure vehicles to appear here then, and it’s been recreated brilliantly by Tarix819 of Eurobricks in a colossal 1:8 scale.
Weighing almost 10kgs, Tarix’s creation features two coil-sprung tracks, each with its own mechanical tensioner and independently powered by an SBrick and three XL motors.
A working V8 engine lives within the armour, and a functioning searchlight is able to light up the obstacle ahead in need of crossing.
And cross an obstacle the Bateman can, as Tarix’s model can deploy the huge bridge mounted on the top of machine. The real Assault Bridge Carrier relied on hand-powered winches (which are also recreated here), but Tarix’s build utilises a Power Functions Medium Motor to complete the model’s suite of remote control functionality.
It’s a monumentally impressive piece of Lego engineering and you can see how Tarix has done it at the Eurobricks discussion form here, and via the brilliant video below.
YouTube Video
The news coming from Afghanistan at the moment is heartbreaking. A rare case of successful international cooperation, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent defeat of its Taliban ‘government’ brought freedom, equal-ish rights, and prosperity to millions of Afghans.
It also brought about a fantastically corrupt (although democratically elected) government and the deaths of tens of thousands, but despite this it would be hard to argue that many Afghans – particularly women – weren’t better off for the intervention.
Which makes it tremendously sad that all of those gains (and the blood spilt to achieve them) may now be lost thanks to a hasty politically-motivated Western withdrawal, with the Taliban regaining power even quicker than they lost it twenty years ago.
More tragically, it’s not the first time that foreign powers have put their own politics before the lives of Afghans…
This is a Soviet BTR-80, a remarkable 8×8 amphibious armoured personal carrier, as used in the Soviet-Afghan War.
Back in 1978 a coup in Afghanistan overthrew the presidency, replacing it with the ‘Democratic Republic of Afghanistan’, a puppet Communist government supported by the Soviet Union, which many of the Afghan people resisted via a brutal guerrilla war.
The UN ordered the Soviet Union to withdraw, which they ignored and engaged in a 9 year war in support of the Communist government, razing villages, destroying farmland, laying millions of landmines, and committing rape and torture.
Sanctions and a mass boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics followed, but worse was to come for the Soviet Union, who ultimately lost the war to the Afghan Mujahideen and the international community supporting them, which – many argue – hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.
The BTR-80 used towards the end of the conflict was still a mighty impressive piece of hardware though, and so too is this spectacular fully RC recreation by Sariel.
With eight-wheel-drive, four-wheel-steering, all-wheel suspension, a three-speed gearbox, motorised hatches, a remotely operable gun turret, rotating and lit searchlight, a working winch, and powered propellors all controlled via bluetooth thanks to three SBricks, Sariel’s BTR-80 is an engineering masterclass.
You can watch all of those incredible features in action via the video below, plus there are more stunning images of Sariel’s creation available to view at his ‘BTR-80’ Flickr album. Click here to make the jump to a pointless war in Afghanistan sometime in the late ’80s.
And back to that disastrous piece of Soviet foreign policy; even after the Soviet Union withdrew defeated, peace in Afghanistan was not forthcoming. A civil war continued to rage, taking the death toll to as many as two million Afghans.
Eventually, after years of turmoil, it was the Taliban who ended up in power, which brings us right back to 2001, the international intervention, and now – twenty years later – the rapid undoing of everything that was won.
