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I've had numerous requests asking that I include my journey into LEGO here so here it is.

In 1983 at the age of 19 I had a motorcycle accident which left me a C4/5 Tetraplegic. I was paralysed from the chest down with no use of or feeling in my hands and very impaired movement of my arms.

After over 9 months in hospital I went home. From then on most of my days were spent with friends & Family or listening to music, reading & 'tinkering' about on my computer. Anything to pass the time. I was happy but, looking back, I wasn't content. I was doing nothing productive with my life

In 2008 I had another accident when the anti-tip device on my electric wheelchair failed while I was going up a step and my wheelchair went over backwards. The impact of my head on the concrete paving  damaged my hearing such that I was no longer able to enjoy music. Also, I was left with severe tinnitus. My moods changed completely and was later diagnosed with clinical depression.

One day my Grandson Jake, who was 4 at the time, was playing with a little LEGO Police car but he dropped it on the floor and of course it broke into lots of pieces. He was really upset & asked me to put it back together for him. I told him I couldn't do it. Time and time again he asked & each time I told him the same. He kept saying you can do it Grum, you can do it, I know you can. He really did believe that I could fix it for him. Not wanting to disappoint I told him I'd try. He gathered up the pieces, sorted them out into groups on the table in front of me.

After half an hour or so spent staring at the pile of pieces wondering how on earth I was going to do this, I leant forward, took a piece of the Lego in my mouth and after much trial and an awful lot of error I managed fit it onto another piece. Jake was so excited. I can gear him even now, 'I knew you could do it, I knew you could do it.'

After almost a week I'd put the 20 or so pieces of the car together. Jake was over the moon and to be honest, so was I. I was really proud of myself. As an added bonus, I found that the concentration really helped my tinnitus.

Over the next few months Jake bought me several more of his broken LEGO models to fix, each bigger than the last & in time fix them I did. Little did I know he was deliberately breaking them! Somehow he knew that I needed this, that it'd help me. How right he was. From those sets I went on to build him other sets, usually Police and Star Wars themed.

With these 'under my belt' I thought I'd give myself a challenge and try something a bit bigger to build. This is when I came across Technic and decided to give it a go. I had a look on Amazon and saw 8258 Crane Truck. I'd not seen anything like it, was it really LEGO? I thought it was such a great looking set and one I thought would give me the challenge I was looking for so I bought it. Boy was I was right.

It took 22 weeks, building for roughly 4 to 6 hours a day for 5 or 6 days a week but I did it. 1800+ parts all done by mouth. The satisfaction and pride I felt upon completing it was undescribable. The stickers were the only things I didn't do. 

Since then I've built:

8110 UniMog (full PF RC)
42009 Mobile Crane (Ultimate)
9398 Crawler
9396 Rescue Helicopter
8725 Bulldozer
8043 Excavator (Ultimate)
8053 Mobile Crane
8421 Mobile Crane
8461 Williams F1
8674 Ferrari F1
8458 Silver Champion
8285 Tow Truck
8466 4 x 4
8274 Combine Harvester
8416 Fork Lift
8048 Buggy (Full PF)
8262 Quad Bike
42007 Dirt Bike
42048 Race Kart
42040 Fire Plane
10220 VW Camper
10242 Mini Cooper
10252 VW Beetle
21307 Caterham
8880 Supercar
42054 Claas Xerion 5000 Trac Vc
7662 Star Wars MTT
42030 Front Loader
42056 Porsche GT3 RS (Pimped)
42082 Rough Terrain Crane (Ultimate)
All the Racers 1:17 cars
42083 Bugatti Chiron (Pimped)
42042 Crawler Crane
42043 Mercedes Benz Arocs

42070 6x6 All Terrain Tow Truck

42069 Extreme Adventure (Full RacingBrick RC)

Jake, his young brother George and little sister Penny, still bring me broken sets to rebuild. They just don't take so long now.

I relish the challenge building LEGO, especially Technic, provides. I get a massive sense of accomplishment with each and every set I build and can honestly say that LEGO has completely changed my life.

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If you're still awake here I am with my WIP Topic. I will collect all my WIP's in this topic.

Let's start with the 9396 Helicopter.

This set has been in storage for around 2 years and on the racking in my shed for the last few months so I thought it well overdue to be built.

As with my previous WIP, the Ultimate 42009, this won't be a deeply technical review type thread, I'll leave that to those far more qualified than I to do so (you know who you are :classic:). This'll just be a few words here and there to describe any problems or thoughts on the build.

I'll keep a tally of how long I build each day, the total build time and at the end of each day's building take some photos (apologies in advance for the quality of my photos).

Today was the first day of building & here's photos of progress.

Build Day 1 - Days build time 4hrs / Total build time 4hrs

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As always, all comments and constructive criticism is welcome

Thank you for viewing.

Edited by grum64
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Nicely done, as always. I was just looking at mine yesterday and was contemplating disassembling it. Now, after seeing your post, I'm gonna let it sit for few more weeks. I'm curious to get your opinion on the rotor. For me, it was a difficult build full of small parts and intricate connections ... (thick/manly fingers do not help). But ... let me not spoil the fun. Enjoy!

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Thank you DrJB for you kind comments.

I took a look through the instructions before starting the build and when I got to the rotor head took a sharp intake of breath. It is, as you say, full of small parts & intricate connections. Fun, Fun, Fun.

Edited by grum64

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Ah another WIP from you, I look forward to slowly seeing this model being build again...

IIRC you have already passed one difficult assembly stage, if my memory serves me correct I found it hard to get the axles in the 5x3x0.5 liftarms (or the other way around).

Leg godt

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Very welldone, I don´t have it but I built it when I had the instructions, a must build set IMO.

Thank you. The 9396 is one I've been wanting to build for a long while but other sets kept getting in the way.

Amongst others I've got the 42042 & 42043 which I've been itching to build but, wanting to build something different, I chose the helicopter. I'm glad I did.

Ah another WIP from you, I look forward to slowly seeing this model being build again...

IIRC you have already passed one difficult assembly stage, if my memory serves me correct I found it hard to get the axles in the 5x3x0.5 liftarms (or the other way around).

Leg godt

Thank you Jeroen.

Your memory does indeed serve you well. Today did involve some tricky building with the 3x3x0.5 liftarms being particularly so.

Edited by grum64

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Great to see another WIP from you Grum. This set is probably one of the few that I wish I had bought when it was in stores. I'm looking forward to watching your progress and seeing this set come together. Oh, and please post some pictures of the shed already. :laugh:

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One of my favorite sets!

Still thinking about combining this with the new helicopter and make a Chinook type helicopter.

Keep up the good work, you will love the result!

Oh, and please post some pictures of the shed already. :laugh:

Have you seen the pictures? Where are the pictures? Are they confidential? We will probably see the first pics after the Toy Fair :laugh:

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Great to see another WIP from you Grum. This set is probably one of the few that I wish I had bought when it was in stores. I'm looking forward to watching your progress and seeing this set come together. Oh, and please post some pictures of the shed already. :laugh:

Thank you Bart. I didn't buy this set when it first came out as my money was earmarked for other sets, so I waited for a used one to come up. I managed to get mine from a UK free ads site at a stupidly low price. I see from eBay etc that the price is now heading north.

Pictures of the shed will be taken very soon. It's now a must do, I'm getting 'pressure' from above :laugh:

Edited by grum64

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One of my favorite sets!

Still thinking about combining this with the new helicopter and make a Chinook type helicopter.

Keep up the good work, you will love the result!

Hmmm, a red, yellow, white and orange Chinook. Now that I'd like to see, it'll certainly be different to the usual army green.

Makes me think of Good Morning Vietnam and the much missed Robin Williams character Adrian Cronauer's camouflage 'sketch'.

Adrian as a Camp Fashion Consultant: I want to tell you something. You know, this whole camouflage thing, for me, doesn't work very well.

Adrian: Why is that?

Adrian as Camp Fashion Consultant: Because you go in the jungle, I can't see you. You know, it's like wearing stripes and plaid. For me, I want to do something different. You know, you go in the jungle, make a statement. If you're going to fight, clash. You know what I mean.

Have you seen the pictures? Where are the pictures? Are they confidential? We will probably see the first pics after the Toy Fair :laugh:

My shed's protected by a very good security system (thank you Gilly) and CCTV so any unauthorised photography will be detected.

You have been warned :laugh:

Edited by grum64

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This is one of the sets that I always want, but never gets its turn. There's always something with higher priority that drains my money :) so I'll be watching your build and enjoying it :)

Cheers, and may the pieces be ever in your favor!

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Thank you.

Like many of us here have you the age old problem of juggling finaces to feed not only our families but our hobby.

I do hope you get to buy the set one day and that you enjoy the build.

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Hi Grum - have fun with this. Are you going to add PF's? And don't do what I did, and install the clutch gears backwards, figuring out much later, and then rebuilding the gear box. :devil:

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Hi Grum - have fun with this. Are you going to add PF's? And don't do what I did, and install the clutch gears backwards, figuring out much later, and then rebuilding the gear box. :devil:

Thank you. I can assure you that fun will be had. It's always fun to build, frustrating sometimes but always fun.

I do plan to add Power Functions and will be careful to install the clutch gears the correct way round.

Whilst building the Ultimate 42009 I put a clutch gear in the wrong way round. I had to dismantle part of the superstructure to correct my mistake which was annoying to say the least. I didn't even know there was a right or wrong way to install a clutch gear. Suffice to say 'lesson learned'.

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Great to see you building again my friend :thumbup:

Thank you Edwin, it's good to be building again. Unfortunately no building today as I had an appointment but I'll get some done over the weekend.

Edited by grum64

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Thank you Edwin, it's good to be building again. Unfortunately no building today as I had an appointment but I'll get some done over the weekend.

Come on ... lego building should be prio #1 ... I promised myself to check daily on your progress and now am disappointed :grin:

Edited by DrJB

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Come on ... lego building should be prio #1 ... I promised myself to check daily on your progress and now am disappointed :grin:

My bad. I'll try to do better :laugh:

I'll be building today so check back later :classic:

Edited by grum64

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I'm pleased to say that this afternoon was free so I've been able to get a few hours building done.

Found fitting the panels tricky, mainly due to their shape, but after nearly an hour and turning the build upside down they were on. I might have got them on a bit quicker had I thought to turn the build upside down sooner and had not been so wary of damaging the stickers although why I worried I don't know as a have 2 spare sets! I'm not always the sharpest knife in the block :classic:

Here's today's progress. As always, sorry about the quality of the pictures.

Build Day 2 - Days build time 3.5hrs / Total build time 7.5hrs

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Come on ... lego building should be prio #1 ... I promised myself to check daily on your progress and now am disappointed :grin:

STOPRESS

Out tomorrow so no building but aim to be back on Monday :laugh:

Edited by grum64

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Nice to see a new build and new topic from you my dear friend :thumbup: I have this 9396 set too but I have not built it yet... I might build it all red or red with some black details some day. Nice beginning, keep up your good work :classic:

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Nice to see a new build and new topic from you my dear friend :thumbup: I have this 9396 set too but I have not built it yet... I might build it all red or red with some black details some day. Nice beginning, keep up your good work :classic:

Good to hear from you, it's been a while.

I've only been building this for two days but already I recommend you build it. Although a tricky build in places it's really enjoyable. As for changing the colour, I like it in the red/yellow but think it'd also look good in red/white so it's similar to those used by the US Coast Guard.

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You are a lot more productive the last view days than me Grum :wink: .

Today i only at and solder 4 gangway lights and 10 bricks in 3 ours :laugh: .

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Always a pleasure watching you build, the amount of patience that you possess is awe inspiring. I look forward to your continued progress!

Edited by John Daniels

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You are a lot more productive the last view days than me Grum :wink: .

Today i only at and solder 4 gangway lights and 10 bricks in 3 ours :laugh: .

The more I build the 'quicker' I seem to get but I guess that's the same for many of us. Having said that I wouldn't rush a build even if I could, I like to enjoy the process and try to learn from it.

I look forward to seeing your next creation.

Always a pleasure watching you build, the amount of patience that you possess is awe inspiring. I look forward to your continued progress!

Thank you, you're very kind.

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Another good day today with just under 3hrs building done.

Besides making a couple of silly mistakes all went well today. A couple of very challenging parts to fit, those being the 2 Axle and Pin Connectors (Part 32013) behind each of the doors. They were a job to get in place but 55 minutes and a rapidly raising temper had them in situ :classic:.

Here's a couple of pictures showing today's progress. As always, sorry about the quality of the pictures.

Build Day 3 - Days build time 2hrs 50mins/ Total build time 10hrs 20 mins.

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Edited by grum64

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