Tag Archives: power functions

Vintage Pump Rules

It’s one minute past midnight here at TLCB Towers, and this writer – for complicated home/partner-based reasons – is sleeping in the office. Or trying too.

An eerie whiring noise awoke said domestic refugee, which was followed by the unmistakable sounds of Elven rage.

Sigh. At least sorting out whatever shenanigans were going on would break the monotony of failing to sleep upright in a wheelie chair.

It turns out the shenanigans were rather unusual; an Elf, perched high up a Technic ladder, was squirting water down upon its previously-slumbering colleagues, much to their wrath.

The cause of the commotion was just as unexpected; a glorious fully remote controlled vintage fire truck, complete with a working water pump.

Flickr’s Nikolaus Löwe (aka Mr_Kleinstein) is the builder behind it, and not only does his vintage fire truck really pump water, there’s remote control drive and steering, motorised support legs, and an enormous elevating, rotating and extending ladder, which the previously mentioned Elf had deployed rather cunningly to soak its unsuspecting brethren.

Come to think of it, perhaps this TLCB writer should use a big ladder to get to the bedro… No, no… that’d probably make things worse.

You can check out more of Nikolaus’ beautiful build at his ‘Fire Ladder Truck’ album on Flickr, whilst this writer ponders his current predicament.

The (Very) Cold War

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

Get Bent

Ah the bendy bus. Commonly used at airports when those raised tubey tunnel things are too far away, and – until recently – found clogging up the streets of TLCB’s home capital.

However whilst the bendy bus works a treat on the wide open concrete of an airport (unless you’re the unfortunate sole stuck standing on the articulation point as it meanders back to Terminal 4), they absolutely do not work on the streets of a two-thousand year old city.

Many American cities though, are rather like airports, what with their wide open concrete, multitude of fast food outlets, and overly-zealous armed security. This makes the bendy bus a much more appropriate method of public transportation there than in London*.

Fortunately this bendy bus, a New Flyer Xcelsior XD60, is transporting commuters in the right place, as evidenced by the excellent ‘Newark Penn Station’ destination boards. And the American flag on the side.

Constructed by JLui15’s Studio, this brilliant brick-built bendy-bus not only looks spectacularly accurate inside and out, there’s a full remote control drivetrain hidden within it too.

Custom replica decals enhance the realism, as does the working articulation in the middle, and there’s loads more to see of JLui15’s incredible creation at their ‘Motorized New Flyer XD60 Articulated Bus’ album on Flickr. Click the link above to ride to Newark Station, New Jersey.

*On the flip side of course, the average American bus passenger would probably get wedged in the winding stairs of a Routemaster double-decker, so the inappropriateness goes both ways.

Mack and Cheese

This beautiful creation is a Mack R Series, one of America’s most ubiquitous heavy duty trucks, introduced in the 1960s and built for almost forty years, they were even made under license in Iran.

R Series trucks came in a huge variety of cab and drive configurations, with this lovely Lego version depicting a simple 6×4 single cab hauling a container trailer.

It’s the work of previous bloggee Vladimir Drozd, who has captured the Mack’s subtle curves brilliantly using a wealth of ‘cheese slopes’, curved bricks and wedges.

Underneath the superbly replicated bodywork Vladimir has fitted a Power Functions remote control drivetrain, with motorised drive and steering, working suspension, and a mechanised fifth-wheel trailer hitch, whilst the trailer itself also includes suspension and working support legs.

Photographed and presented beautifully, there’s more to see of Vladimir’s wonderful Mack R Series on Flickr – click the link in the text above to take a look.

The Garbage Man Can!

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.

Fork This

This a motorised forklift truck, it comes from previous bloggee Vladimir Drozd, and it is quite good at squashing Elves.

With a number of our smelly little workers distracted by something shiny, the Elven discoverer of this creation snuck up and dropped a box on them. Because it could.

Doubtless a victim of past smushings, it enjoyed being the perpetrator immensely, and is now happily eating an orange Smartie whilst we patch up the victims.

A pair of Power Functions motors raise and tilt the forklift boom (enabling a brick built box to tip smartly onto those underneath), whilst a further two motors drive and steer the truck itself, and there’s more to see at both Flickr, Eurobricks, and via the video below.

YouTube Video

 

Yule Logs

We’re back on track! With today’s other posts being a vehicle we vehemently hate and one with no tenuous Christmas link whatsoever, here’s one that ticks both boxes.

We love the classic ’70s Mercedes-Benz Unimog, and Lego recreations of it surely don’t come any better than this; proran’s beautiful Christmas-coloured Model Team U406 tipper, a creation five years in the making.

One image in particular caught our eye, in which proran has replicated a real-world U406 beside a log pile with wonderful attention to detail. We rarely publish images of real vehicles, but this is such a gorgeous composition we simply had too. Plus it makes the title work.

Alongside the stunning exterior, proran has faithfully recreated the Unimog U406’s mechanicals too, with solid-axle suspension, working steering via the wheel, four-wheel-drive linked to a 4-cylinder engine, a tipping bed, and front and rear PTOs selectable from within the cab.

A Power Functions motor can be applied to demonstrate the model’s functions, which you can watch via the excellent video at the end of this post, and an extensive gallery of imagery is available showing proran’s creation and the real-world U406 that inspired it via Bricksafe.

Click the link above to take a closer look, or here to visit the Eurobricks forum for full build details and to join the discussion.

YouTube Video

Building Big

Really, really big.

The human in the above picture is Beat Felber, a Lego builder of gigantic proportions. His models we mean.

Surrounding Beat are ten spectacular fully remote controlled pieces of mining equipment, many of which have featured on these pages over the years, including the Komatsu D575A-3 Super Dozer, the Marathon LeTourneau L-1200 loader, the Marion 204-M Superfront cable-operated mining shovel, the Terex 33-19 Titan mining truck, and the astonishing Marion 5760 ‘The Mountaineer’ 2,750-ton mining shovel

Beat’s assembly is even larger and more impressive than your Dad’s collection of speciality magazines, and we suspect it makes Beat more than capable of tunnelling underneath his own house should he choose to.

Head to Beat’s photostream via the first link for a closer look at the jaw-dropping image above, and you can check out some of the individual models pictured within it via the links in this post or via the search function on this page.

Bah Humbug!

Civilian Hummers are rubbish. Whether a lightly adapted military transport or a re-bodied Chevrolet Tahoe, they’re enjoyed principally by conspiracy-theorising, climate-change denying, ‘Freedom!’-shouting blancmanges. And TLCB Elves.

Hence why we have one here today, otherwise we’d have had an Elven riot to quash, and also – begrudgingly – it is absolutely brilliant.

Built by Michael217, this beautifully presented Hummer H1 features a Power Functions remote controlled 4×4 drivetrain and steering, all-wheel independent suspension, opening doors and hood, plus a highly detailed engine bay and interior, which is so realistic we half expected to see a gun rack and ‘MAGA’ flag.

An extensive gallery of images available to view at Michael’s ‘Hummer H1’ Bricksafe page, plus there’s more to see at the Eurobricks discussion forum. Grab your ‘MAGA’ flag and storm the Capitol via the links above!

What a Load…

Loading. Reloading. Unloading. All the loadings are excellent. At least according to mahjqa and his co-conspirators.

This is mahjqa’s lovely Model Team / Technic truck, and it is – as you’d expect from a TLCB Master MOCer and motion-making extraordinaire – fully remote controlled, right down to the ‘fifth wheel’ trailer hitch.

Of course mahjqa didn’t stop there though, devising a fiendishly tricky competition in which Lego trucks such as this one, plus trailers and ingenious little RC forklifts all operate to, well… move stuff about rather pointlessly.

In the words of the creator, it’s “ten minutes of bad manoeuvring, dropped cargo, and unprofessional commentary”, which definitely sounds like our kind of contest film.

Take a look via the video below, and you can see more of mahjqa’s entry at his Flickr album and at the Eurobricks discussion forum via these links.

YouTube Video

Ferrari at Forty

The definitive 1980s supercar, the Ferrari F40 has become – like most old vehicles – ludicrously expensive. Of course it was ludicrously expensive when new too, but fortunately we have a thoroughly more attainable version of Ferrari’s 40th birthday present to itself here today.

Built by previous bloggee paave, this excellent Technic F40 includes plenty of features found on the real car, including independent suspension, a working V8 engine, and pop-up headlights, plus Power Functions remote control drive and steering.

Modular construction and opening doors, front clamshell and rear engine cover allow all of the above to be easily accessed, and paave has produced building instructions so that you can create your very own remote control Technic Ferrari F40 at home.

There’s more to see at both Eurobricks and Bricksafe, and you can take a look and find the link to recreate paave’s F40 for yourself by clicking the hyperlinked words above.

The Joy of the Unexceptional

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

Distri-brick-tion

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.

Camp Fire

We love repurposed vehicles (or anything else for that matter) here at The Lego Car Blog. Taking something and transforming for a different purpose is not only far less environmentally damaging than making something new, the results are often way cooler. As evidenced by Beat Felber‘s wonderful 1984 Land Rover 110.

Beat’s real-world Land Rover served as an off-road fire engine for about twenty-five years, before it was retired and converted into the superb off-road camper it is today, and Beat has now recreated it in Lego form, capturing his real-life vehicle beautifully.

Underneath the brilliantly life-like exterior – complete with opening doors and hood – is a remotely controlled 4×4 drivetrain powered by an SBrick, with L-Motors driving both axles (each of which is suspended), a Servo the steering, and an M-Motor the high/low gearbox.

It’s a delightful build made all the better by its real-world counterpart, and there’s more to see of both Beat’s Lego Land Rover 110 and the real fire-engine-turned-camper that inspired it via the link above.

Royal Württemberg

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.