[MOC] Experimental Supercar

[Lego Nerd]

Hello everyone,

I would like to present an experimental supercar which I have finally finished.

A little bit of history: it started because I noticed that the various LEGO-designed cars with pushrod suspension start sagging overtime as the ball joints and other pieces become warped. Also, they tend to exert forces in undesirable ways; the pushrods on 8461 (Williams F1 racer) especially on the front tend to push the rocker arms up and down as opposed to transferring the force directly to a rocking motion. So in this supercar, I made the front suspension with pushrods use a 45-degree angle for the rocker arms so that the force would be more properly applied. The springs and rockers are visible towards the front of the car in this photo:

A separate goal this project succeeded in accomplishing is making independent rear suspension with a differential and no floating axle in a very narrow chassis. The differential placed behind the wheels made for a very narrow chassis!

Other features this car has are:

Gullwing doors

Opening rear hood and extentable spoiler

And a miniature V8 engine

Thanks for looking!

[nerdsforprez]

Golly! I think this is excellent!  Is this your first MOC submission?  I love the compactness and scale. Not a huge fan of the front wheel arches, but that would be really my only critique. Gullwing doors are nice, they remind me of Crowkillers original cars.  I love your solution for keeping the chassis narrow (read diff) - and the extending spoiler is a new thing for me. We see a lot of retractable spoilers (parallel to length) but not many extendable (perpendicular) to length.  Is this a real function in actual cars?

[TechnicRCRacer]

Wow! This is awesome! I would really like to see how you created the rear drive/suspension setup!

[Lego Nerd]

1 hour ago, nerdsforprez said:

Golly! I think this is excellent!  Is this your first MOC submission?  I love the compactness and scale. Not a huge fan of the front wheel arches, but that would be really my only critique. Gullwing doors are nice, they remind me of Crowkillers original cars.  I love your solution for keeping the chassis narrow (read diff) - and the extending spoiler is a new thing for me. We see a lot of retractable spoilers (parallel to length) but not many extendable (perpendicular) to length.  Is this a real function in actual cars?

Thank you very much! It is my first MOC submission, and it's been a blast finishing my first (shareable) model. Thanks for your comments; I wish the arches could have been better, but the suspension travel of the front wheels meant that they had to be high in order not to scrape when fully compressed.

I was thinking of Crowkillers as well; his cars were an inspiration for me! The extending spoiler like that is pretty rare, but I got this idea from the Porsche Panamera GTS, whose spoiler rises up as well as extends sideways. In the Porsche, I imagine they used this solution to suit the car's styling. In mine, the spoiler kind of helped me nail down the car's styling ;-)

[Jurss]

7 hours ago, Lego Nerd said:

The differential placed behind the wheels made for a very narrow chassis!

Interesting variant for this solution (yes, there was done that before You). 

Strange, that engine is somewhere between (missing) front seats 

Please provide some pictures of front part, to show what exactly have You done there

Otherway really good MOC>

For me it is more interesting and new, how You used halfbeams, fixed with axles for main frame of the chassis, to make it narrow and fit suspension

[T Lego]

Great Job! like others have said before, I would also like to see some more details of the suspension.

[syclone]

A car full of interesting solutions, very refreshing to usual cars) Front reminds me of Alfa Romeo Brera, and looks really mean 

[Lego Nerd]

Thank you, everyone, for your comments and compliments!

@Jurss, It does have front seats; I removed them to show the engine, which wound up being built very low into the car. I would say that if I could rebuild the car, I would try to make the engine and seats more realistic, however. Yes the half-width liftarms are used very heavily throughout the MOC, and half-stud offsets help the bodywork look better and provide much of the structure of the front suspension. I appreciate your feedback!

I'll do my best to show the suspension; it's a little hard because of the small size and compact nature of the vehicle.

Here's the front suspension:

As my pushrods, I used the 5x1 Steering Arm connected to the lower A-arm. Steering was a simple crank setup.

In this view, you can see the suspension compressed on one side.

Here is the side view (seats and significant bodywork removed). Just to the right of the vertical rod (steering), you can see the end of the 45 degree section. I used the 2x4 Liftarm to hold the springs lengthwise in the car, but rotated at that 45 degree angle to match the rockers and pushrods. So the way it works is: the lower A-arm pushes up on the pushrod, which rotates the rocker arm. The rocker arm then pushes back on the spring.

Here's the rear suspension with some bodywork removed. The wheel is mounted on one half of the CV joint, which is the first articulation (at the hub) needed for the suspension to happen. The black 12t gear rotates the tan one, providing the next articulation for the suspension. The links for the rear suspension rotate parallel to this axle, but the stress-bearing members are above and below the axle so that the rotation is free at all times. Going back, the next black 12t spins a tan 12t, and here we find the differential. The differential rotates a 20t tan gear just visible on the right side of the differential. This gear actually connects to the engine's crankshaft directly.

@T Lego Thanks! I hope the pictures help! Do the pictures help? Would there be a better angle that you'd like to see?

@syclone Thank you very much! I'm pretty happy with the way the front turned out, and I like the Brera as well.

[ginger-snapped]

Very impressive! Really smart solutions. Doing the pushrod suspension at that 45° angle is quite fascinating and intriguing. Nice job!

[T Lego]

2 hours ago, Lego Nerd said:

Thanks! I hope the pictures help! Do the pictures help? Would there be a better angle that you'd like to see?

Thanks! I fully understand it now. Very ingenious solution

[Jurss]

If I understood everything correctly, then front pushrods, and how You made that connections to gears at the other end of axle to wheel - then it is SOMETHING!

[Cyclone_37]

Looks nice, gives me some camaro vibes