Tag Archives: Nico71

Terra-Tired Transporter

Leave a reply

This is a Foremost Delta, a 6×6, articulated, multi-terrain, terra-tired transport, and the best thing to come out of Canada since maple syrup and Elisha Cuthbert.

This incredible fully remote controlled Technic recreation of the amazing Canadian machine comes from TLCB master MOCer Nico71, who has replicated the Delta’s 6×6 drivetrain, articulated steering, and improbably suspension in Lego form.

A suite of Control+ components deliver power to the all-wheel-drive system and linear-actuator driven articulation, whilst the model also includes opening doors, a removable bed and cab, and can be equipped with front and rear winches.

Building instructions are available and there’s more to see of Nico’s superbly-engineered Foremost Delta on Brickshelf and via the excellent video below, plus you can read Nico’s Master MOCers interview here at TLCB by clicking these words. Take a look whilst this TLCB Writer returns to thinking about maple syrup and Elisha Cuthbert. Or somehow combining the two.

YouTube Video

Star 69*

1 Reply

It’s been while since the last Elf-smushing, and the Elven discoverer of today’s creation was doubtless excited to reinstate the tradition with its remote control find.

Unfortunately for the aforementioned mythical worker, TLCB Master MOCer Nico71’s fantastic Technic Wester Star 6900 Twinsteer truck was too ponderous to mow down any of its Elven brethren, as evidenced when this TLCB Writer watched it trundling about the office in forlorn pursuit, much to annoyance of its driver.

But our Elves can occasionally display a degree of ingenuity…

Cue today’s Elf, which gave up using the Western Star’s Control+ powered remote control drive and steering, and instead deployed the motorised winch mounted behind the cab. Hooking it to a cage in which a couple of Elves were residing, it hauled the metal box onto the back of the truck, before driving off much to the terror of the Elves trapped inside.

We’re not actually sure where the kidnapped Elves have been taken, but they and their captor can’t have gone far. Besides, we have plenty of Elves.

Anyway, whilst we go and search TLCB Towers for a remote control Technic truck with a cage of kidnapped workers on board, you can see more of Nico’s excellent Western Star 6900 Twinsteer truck, complete with remote control drive and twin-axle steering, a motorised winch, working suspension, and a 6-cylinder engine, at his Brickshelf gallery.

Click the link above to see all the imagery and to find a link to building instructions, plus you can watch the Western Star in action (hauling a diesel pump rather than a cage full of kidnapped Elves) by clicking here.

*Today’s excellent title song.

My Other’s Truck’s a Bugatti

1 Reply

Is there anything in the vehicular world more pointless than truck racing? OK, The Brothers Brick’s review of the blue LEGO Fiat 500 set – which is exactly the same as the yellow one, only blue – probably takes the win, but truck racing is a close second.

Why take something designed specifically to pull heavy things long distances in the most fuel efficient way, and adapt it to go a short distance quickly whilst pulling nothing? It’s like using an airliner as the basis for a powerboat.

Anyway, pointlessness of source material aside, TLCB Master MOCer Nico71 has created a rather excellent racing truck from his 42083 Technic Bugatti Chiron set, with steering, an eight-speed sequential gearbox, functioning suspension, a working piston engine, and a tilting cab.

Nico’s made building instructions of his alternate available too, so you can convert your own 42083 Bugatti Chiron set into this brilliant Lego version of the world’s most pointless racing vehicle at home.

There’s more of Nico’s Bugatti B-Model to see at his Brickshelf gallery by clicking here, you can read his Master MOCers interview here at TLCB via the link in the text link above, and you can watch all of the race truck’s features in action in the video below.

YouTube Video

Big Hero 6

Leave a reply

This is a 1950s Berliet T100, a French-built, V12-powered 6×6 truck, with a gross weight of over 100 tons, and it was the largest truck in the world.

Four T100s were built between 1957 and 1959, with three flatbeds (as depicted here) designed to take enormous pieces of equipment off-road to serve oil and gas exploration in Northern Africa, whilst the fourth was outfitted as a dump truck for use in a French uranium mine.

The trucks were powered by a 29.6 litre Cummins engine, supplemented by a smaller Panhard engine used to power the steering and as a generator, and delivered a power figure of between 600 and 700bhp. One T100 was even fitted with an experimental gas turbine for a while, before it reverted back to diesel power.

Nico71’s incredible Technic recreation of the Berliet T100 includes both of these engines, along with a fully working replica of the T100’s 6×6 drivetrain, with three L Motors (one for each axle), all-wheel suspension, and a Medium Motor powering a compressor that can pneumatically lock all three differentials.

A fifth motor drives the steering front axle, with a final M Motor powering a winch mounted at the back of the cab, able to drag equipment up the T100’s ramp for transportation.

All six motors can be operated via bluetooth thanks to a third party SBrick controller, providing Nico’s 1:20 scale 3kg model with an accurate scaled-down representation of the real Berliet T100’s off-road ability.

You can see Nico71’s amazing creation in action via the video below, and you can read full details about both the build and the history of the real 1950s Berliet T100 trucks at Nico’s excellent website, where a complete gallery of images and 550-page building instructions can also be found.

YouTube Video

My Other Car’s a Corvette

Leave a reply

TLCB’s Coronavirus Lock-down B-Model Competition is complete, although a lock-down could be on the horizon again as COVID-19 cases surge around the world and deaths pass one million. Oof.

Dozens of brilliant B-Models were produced for the contest, and whilst the competition may be over, alternate building keeps going, as demonstrated here by TLCB Master MOCer Nico71.

Constructed only from the pieces found within the 42093 Technic Chevrolet Corvette set, Nico has created this cool-looking sand buggy, complete with working suspension, a transverse three-cylinder engine, and functioning steering.

Nico has also made instructions for his alternate available so that you can convert your own 42093 Corvette into a sand buggy at home, and you can see all the images and find a link to building instructions on Brickshelf by clicking here.

Steam Powered Velocipede

Leave a reply

The current craze for e-bikes shows that mankind’s propensity to make literally everything lazier continues unabated. However we’re not new in our quest to eradicate all forms of exercise, as back in the late 1800s our forebears had the same idea, first creating the ‘steam powered velocipede‘ which we want based upon its name alone, and later strapping a steam engine to a penny farthing, to eliminate all that inconvenient pedalling. Remarkably they worked too.

Cue TLCB Master MOCer and all-round Technic-building genius Nico71, who has created his own ‘steam’ powered bicycle (or velocipede as we shall now call it), equipped with a single cylinder Lego Pneumatic Engine, that – when fed with ‘steam’ (compressed air) – powers the velocipede through a two speed gearbox.

Every element of Nico’s machine is LEGO, including an ingenious design that genuinely ‘throttles’ the amount of air entering the engine controlled via a handlebar-mounted lever, a flywheel for maintaining the engine’s smoothness, and a working rear brake.

It’s all preposterously clever and best of all Nico has made instructions available so that you can build you very own Steam Powered Velocipede at home, which we genuinely might do! Head to Brickshelf to see all the imagery, Nico’s excellent website for full details and building instructions, and you can watch this remarkable contraption in action via the video below.

YouTube Video

 

My Other Car is a Giant Mobile Crane

Leave a reply

LEGO’s huge 42082 Rough Terrain Crane is one the largest Technic sets the company has ever created, with over four thousand pieces. That’s a whole, lot of bricks that can be, in the very best traditions of Lego-building, repurposed.

And that is exactly was previous Master MOCer Nico71 has done with this incredible 4×4 Crane Truck, constructed only from the parts found within the 42082 set. Nico’s B-Model (in fact for Nico this is an ‘E-Model’, as he’s constructed several alternate vehicles (and all of this) from the Rough Terrain Crane set already) deploys the set’s single motor to perform a scarcely believable six separate functions, thanks to a pair of gearboxes that multiply the motor’s outputs.

Before we get onto those though, there are a host of mechanical functions too, including leaf-spring suspension, a V8 engine driven by all four wheels, opening doors, functioning steering, and the boom’s final extension.

The single motor delivers just as much on its own, thanks to those two gearboxes, powering the crane’s two-fold unfurling and rotation, the outriggers, and the truck’s tipper, which can tip both to rear and side of the vehicle depending upon which gear is selected.

It’s a brilliant feat of engineering and one that you can explore for yourself if you own a Technic 42082 Rough Terrain Crane set, as Nico has made instructions for this unbelievable B-Model available via his excellent website. Click this link to head over and take a look at the complete build description, the full gallery of images, and to find a link to the building instructions so you can build this amazing model for yourself.

YouTube Video

Get Fork-D

1 Reply

The LEGO Technic 42082 Rough Terrain Crane has the highest piece count of any Technic model so far (although check back here later to see what’s about to eclipse it…) including multiple motors, linear actuators and gearbox parts, making it the perfect set for repurposing into something new. LEGO offer this themselves via the ‘B-Models’ that can be built from most Technic sets, and TLCB Master MOCer Nico71 has gone two steps further by designing both ‘C’ and ‘D’ Models from the parts found within the 42082 inventory.

Nico’s 42082 ‘C-Model’ appeared here last year and he’s now designed a further ‘D-Model’ that can be built solely from the parts found within the Rough Terrain Crane set.

Nico’s heavy duty forklift includes as many functions as the set from which its parts are taken, including a motorised tilting and raising/lowering fork, powered adjustable fork width, a tilting cabin, V6 piston engine, pendular suspension and working steering.

It’s a brilliant build, made even more so by the parts restriction inherent with being built from an existing set, and you can see full details, the complete gallery of images, and find building instructions at Nico71’s website by clicking here.

YouTube Video

Crawler Grabber

1 Reply

Lego Technic RC Tracked Grab

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.

Plan B

Leave a reply

Lego Technic Group B Rally Car

Back in the mid-’80s world rally cars were a very different animal to those racing today. With only the loosest affiliation to their road-going counterparts, the racers of Group B took rallying (and then rally-cross, after they were banned from the WRC in 1987) to a whole new level or speed, and – unsurprisingly – risk. Formula 1 had mostly cleaned up its safety record by the mid-’80s, however Group B rallying ensured that professional motorsport continued to send people home in boxes.

A series of fatalities in 1986 prompted the FIA to act, and it was to be Group B’s last WRC season. The cars were not forgotten though, with many transferring to rally-cross, whilst Peugeot updated their monstrous 205 T16 to run in the Paris-Dakar rally, winning in ’87. ’89 and ’90.

Previous bloggee and Technic legend Nico71 hasn’t forgotten either, paying homage to the insanity of Group B with his latest creation, this superb Technic Group B rally car. Based on no particular model Nico’s model looks a bit like an Opel Astra to us (if Opel has created a Group B challenger), and it’s packed with mechanical Technic functions. These include a mid-mounted V6 engine, all-wheel-drive with three differentials, working steering both by the wheel and Hand-of-God, opening doors and rear engine bodywork, and fully independent suspension on all wheels.

As the time of writing Nico’s latest build isn’t on Brickshelf or the other main creation-sharing websites (big points for the Elf that found it!), but you can see all the details, a huge gallery of high quality images, and access instructions to build this model yourself at Nico’s own website. Click the link above to head to a forest in 1985.

Lego Technic Group B WRC Nico71

24 Heures du Mans (Partie Deux)

1 Reply

Lego Le Mans LMP1 Race Car

French made, French raced, Technic LMP1 cars are like buses…

The second LMP1 car to appear here this week arrived courtesy of a reader via the Feedback and Submission Suggestions page. It comes from previous bloggee Nico71, and it is – as you can see – gorgeous. Underneath the swoopy prototype-class bodywork sits a fully functioning chassis complete with authentic double-wishbone push-rod suspension, a working V8 engine, steering, and opening doors and engine cover.

Lego Technic Suspension

At the time of writing Nico’s Technic LMP1 racer isn’t present at any of our Elves’ usual haunts, but fortunately it is available at Nico’s own (and excellent) website, where there is also a huge gallery of detailed photos with instructions to come. For all the details click on these blue words to visit Nico’s website.

Lego Le Mans LMP1 Racer

Power to the People

1 Reply
Honda 125

Normally seen somewhere underneath 3 children, their parents, a great Aunt, a basket of rice and a 6ft roll of carpet

Honda’s CG 125 is one of the great mobilisers of the modern world, capable of carrying whole families, delivering carpet, drain-pipes and live animals, and even in a few cases I’ve seen, entire shops (roof, shelving, stock and all). Nico71 has produced the superb Technic version above; see more in his gallery on Brickshelf.