MOD: Classic truck conversions

[bootz]

Its funny how dainty the old 4-wides look compared to their 6-wide counterparts.

[Strikeman]

Holidays are over, back to building :-)

I've used my time off to reorganise my whole LEGO room, and now I can build things without moving boxes around all the time. Downside is I had to remove my city layout for the moment, but I'll learn to live with that ...

On to the next one. It's the first iteration and comments are more than welcome. I'm particularly unhappy with the outriggers, so any good suggestions will be listened to !

The 1987 - Snorkel Squad was probably my most beloved fire-fighter vehicle. I only have two though, so there wasn't much choice

I loved making scenes with small high rises that I'd build and fire-fighters rescuing townspeople from certain death

The only gripe I had (and still have) is that the cab isn't completely closed in the front: you can see the minifig drivers legs when sitting in the cab due to the low nature of the vehicle.

The original instruction manual:

And in real bricks:

And with boom and outriggers extended:

When converting it to 6-wide I ran into some problems. I couldn't really make it a lot longer because I couldn't extend the boom and I didn't want to make it much higher, making for less leeway when rebuilding the cab.

However, except for the outriggers, I think I managed to capture its look in 6-wide version. Remember, the plan is to keep the sets recognizable.

The new outriggers actually lift the whole thing upa little bit, providing more stability when using the boom.

I think I managed to give it a more "current" look, even with the limitations of the small cab.

I didn't have this set twice, which meant I had to cheat with another boom. Overall length is increased by a little over 4 studs

All images link to higher resolution images, rest of the images in this Brickshelf folder.

Comments and suggestions more than welcome !