johncarpenter

Nice pictures of the Isetta! Pictures of the whole thing you can find everywhere, these are much more interesting As you probably guessed, this is on my list of projects to build. I haven't had time lately, but perhaps it is time start again

Having several larger builds stuck in various stages of building kind of pushed me towards smaller projects. This is one of those, the Peel P50. The Peel P50 is a three-wheeled microcar originally made from 1962 to 1965. It was listed in the 2010 Guinness World Records as the smallest production car ever made. The model has the following functions: Front and rear suspension Opening door with locking latch Steering Single cylinder engine, driven by rear wheel Handbrake Here are some more pictures: Finally, here is a video of the car in action: I'm really happy with how this project turned out. At the beginning, I was quite doubtful whether I would be able to replicate the curved shapes reasonably well. The end result came out much much better than I expected. This build now has me thinking about more microcars. Technical details: Length: 20 studs Width: 15 studs Height: 16 studs Weight: 333 grams

Thanks, it starts to get the cogs turning. I enjoy building a lot, but trying to build with limited set of parts often has the "writers block" effect on me. I think the Ford has a great set of parts though, I'll see what I can come up with.

Thanks to Stign's kind help, I was able to finish the instructions. If you would like to build this, the instructions are now available for free on Rebrickable.

Great, great B model, congrats! Can you share any details on your process? I would be really curious to know how you approach building a B model from the limited set of parts.

Hello everyone, After a long, long while, I have gotten around to doing instructions of this model which I'm planning to share on rebrickable. However, as this is the first building instruction I have ever done, it would be helpful if anyone was willing to look it over before I put it out there. If anyone is interested, please get in touch via direct message. Many thanks!

Very nice! I really like the "re-imagining" approach, rather than just "rebuilding studless", while still staying instantly recognizable.

Wow, it's really fast for such a huge model! Also looks great and works well, congrats! It would be interesting to learn more about your process: how much time did it take? What were the most challenging parts?

Hello everyone! This is a work-in-progress, or maybe work-on-hold project. I wanted to do a simple, all manual Smart Fortwo, kind of matching the scale of the 42098 auto transporter. I started off with the bodywork, and initally, it went quite well. After some iteration, I was really happy with where it was going. The back end is done, the front needs a little work, but I think the bodywork so far really captures the look of the Smart with the general shape and the minimal overhangs. Next, I switched to the powertrain. My original plan was to have the 3 cylinder engine and a gearbox that would fit (maybe a 2 speed). While looking for compact gearbox designs, I stumbled across this CVT design on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmefDOFzLuY&t=3s This looked very compact, and a CVT would be cooler than a 2 speed, so I went on with that. My first draft of the powertrain was messy and fragile: I redesigned this to a cleaner, still compact solution... ... and started to transplant the existing body to this new chassis. At this point, I noticed that the CVT in this configuration did not really work. Most of the time, the motion is not transmitted enough to drive the 3 cylinder engine, so this solution doesn't really work. The build is now on hold as I try to figure out how to move forward from here. I don't see any obvious way to make the CVT work better, so the options I'm thinking about are: remove the CVT, no gears at all (very doable, but lacks ambition) remove the CVT, make a 2 speed gearbox (difficult and 2 speed is "too litte") put a Buwizz and some motors in it (not sure if everything will fit) Looking forward to hearing feedback and suggestions...

Yeah, it looks like a pretty similar scale, so those panels are pretty obvious solutions. What is interesting is that this one does have power functions, even using the big battery box. It looks like it is a bit taller than mine, so a bit more space available. Even so, this gives me some hope that I could fit some motors in there.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll report back once I figure out which direction to go. Yeah, the front needs some work as well, I'll see if I can find that part.

Wow, these are really nice and original. My favorite is the drill press, great looks and also functions!

Thanks everyone for the great feedback! As I wrote at the beginning, I kind of started this project because I was stuck on other, larger builds. I just wanted to build something manageable and call a project done. Somehow, it turned out way nicer than I could have hoped for when starting out. Does anyone else do the same? Take a break from larger / longer builds to build something small?

Wow, thanks for the compliments, I was not expecting this :) For the door latch, I was trying to use one of the smallest rubber bands to move the catch back, but I had a hard time attaching it anywhere on the door. When I was playing around with that, I noticed that the catch already moved back partly due to its own weight. Initially it was not quite moving back to vertical, so I added two more think red liftarms on the other side, to help it move back a bit more. This worked well, and it stays vertical now. The rubber band was not necessary after all. Sometimes, things just come together. My favorite part is the handbrake, just for the fact that I could incorporate it, in this scale, in this tiny car. I did this at the very end, after I thought I was finished. There was not much space left in the car, but the possibility of having a handbrake was just too cool, and kept nagging me. I decided that I had to at least try to add it. I had to take pretty much the whole thing apart twice, but I was able to add the simple mechanism under the seat and it works reliably. The car came out pretty nice, and adding the handbrake at the very end was the cherry on top for me.

Thanks everyone for the feedback! The front suspension was a bit of a coincidence, to be honest. Initially, I was not planning to have front suspension. However, I could not find a good way of attaching the front wheels with enough ground clearance. That's why I finally went to those small suspension arms. After that, having the rubber connectors as springs seemed pretty obvious. They are pretty stiff, with not a lot of travel, but still pretty cool. I'm happy that it evolved to such a nice solution. I have to give credit where it is due: my better half had the idea to use the thin string to pull the car. I must say, it makes all the difference for the video.

Looking good so far. Can you show the detail of the door mechanism?

Thanks! Yes, driving around with two trailers was fun :) It required an enormous amount of space, though, especially for driving completely out of the frame on some shots. I had a couple of stressful moments where the whole ensemble almost fell completely off the surface. Luckily though, no bricks were harmed in the making of this video :)

Hello everyone, I want to introduce my new project: The Linde P250 Tow Tractor: This is only my third project after returning to Lego Technic after 20 years, so I consider myself a beginner as I have little experience with studless building. After my last project (RC skid steer) where I had a lot of headaches fitting everything in, I wanted to build something simpler for my next project. I picked the Linde P250 as the reference for this build. The starting goal was not to have an accurate scale model, but to have a simple remote controlled model that could drive around. The real one has two versions, a short and long wheelbase. I picked the long wheelbase version to have more room for internals. According to the scale I chose, the model was going to end up 13 studs wide, which looked tight but doable. As I only planned to have driving and steering, I thought that this should be fine. After picking some suitable wheels and printing out the blueprint, I started off with the exterior design, sides and front first. I was studying pictures and videos of the real thing and this is where I started to add some things to the original plan. There is a lever in the cabin that locks and unlocks the trailer coupling. Using this, the operator can grab or release trailers without getting out of the cabin and walking around to the back. Also, I saw that this particular model is available with normal or sliding doors, so I wanted to try the sliding of course. Finally, the tractor can be driven (very slowly) forwards or backwards from outside using a pair of buttons, again to make working with trailers easier. I knew that this function was going to be challenging, due to the limited space available at the back of the vehicle. There goes the idea of keeping it simple this time... I started to redesign the sides to have sliding doors. There was a tricky point with the doors: On the real thing, the door has a piece which closes the gap between the bottom of the sliding door, and the cabin floor. If this piece were to be fixed to the door, it would interfere with the front wheel when the door is slid back. Therefore, it swings into the door and disappears when the door is slid open. I had to either make something similar or leave a gap there. My first version of the sliding doors worked, but had two issues: The door slid back only 5 studs, which seemed too little and the swing up piece did not work great. I iterated on this to fix both problems: I replaced the flap thing, and played around with the geometry of how it slides up. Also, I changed the vertical door post and the rail support at the top of the door to be half width linkarms. Now, the door was able to slide 6 studs, and the swing up piece looked good and worked reliably. I did play around with making the door open even wider, but it looked like anything more than 6 studs would mean a lot of other compromises, so I settled on that. I also worked on the front: The first iteration looked way too narrow, so I moved the headlights outward: In parallel, I was looking at how to package the internals. I wanted to use the normal AA battery box, but at 11 studs wide, it was challenging to fit. The most efficient way seemed to be to have it in the middle of the chassis, at the bottom. That way, it fit exactly between the side panels, and even protruded half a stud below the chassis, saving space by cheating slightly. In researching the pieces I would need to build this in red, like the original, I realized that some of the thin liftarms I used on the door were not available in red. The issue if I used normal liftarms was that the door would slide just 5 studs. I redesigned the mechanism, to use a normal liftarm for the vertical part of the door, and used a short liftarm (yellow in the picture below) which was able to slide 1 stud under the roof. This way, the door was able to slide 6 studs, and did not need the thin liftarms. I also redesigned the sides, using 5x11 panels at the bottom, which improved both the looks and the structural stability, especially of the battery box mounting. With the exterior starting to come together nicely, next up was to see if I could fit all the functions inside. I wanted to have an L motor for driving and a servo for the steering. For the "driving slowly using buttons on the side of the vehicle" function, I needed an M motor, a clutch to switch the drive to this motor, some gearing down, and a PF switch. I had selected the scale before deciding to add this feature, and it was looking quite unlikely that everything would fit inside. This is where I am at right now. At this point, I'm thinking that I either need to go from a width of 13 up to 15 studs, or give up on the "button driving" function. I do think that feature adds a lot to this relatively simply model, so I would really like to keep it. Actually, widening by 2 studs has a lot of advantages at this point: Currently, the space available above the battery is exactly 9 studs wide. If I widen to 15, that would give me 11 studs of room in the top half, which means I can move the battery to the top. This would then free up 13 studs of width below, for the motors etc... As I still don't have a front axle, I think I will build that first with the servo. Based on that, I can see exactly how much space I have left and then decide if I will widen the model.

Thank you both for the feedback. Yeah, I forgot about that when I was making the video. If I build something else related to luggage handling, I'll definitely keep that in mind :)

After a long long pause, I was finally able to finish this project. Since the last update, I built two luggage carts for this guy to pull. I was not so sure about making luggage pieces. I tried out some of the existing Lego ones, but none of it really seemed to suit this project. Then, with a nudge from my significant other, I started to make a couple of suitcases. She then joined me, and we made many, many suitcases. At this point, I wanted to take some pictures, make a video and call this one done. However... I saw the new Lego Technic Jeep Wrangler, and a new part: the 3x7 panel, in yellow. This triggered an idea I had had at the beginning of the project: The Linde P250 has a short wheelbase or long wheelbase option. At the beginning of the project, I had chosen to go with the long wheelbase option, as it would mean more space for internals. Another reason for that choice was that the 3x11 panel fit very well as the bodywork on the side. Now, with the 3x7 panel, doing a good looking short wheelbase version would also be possible. Knowing how tightly packed the long wheelbase version was, I knew that I could not fit all the same features into a shorter package. The obvious thing to drop was the button driving feature, which would save a lot of space and complexity. Also, I decided to do the lower half of the body in black instead of dark bluish grey, due to better part availability. Here are some final pictures: Finally, here is a video of them in action, hope you like it :) I'm really happy with how this project came out. The tow tractors look good, work well, and the bigger one has the extra button driving feature, which is quite original. To be honest though, the most fun part of this was building the suitcases. There was something addictive about making one suitcase after another, adding this or that detail to each new one. It was so much fun, I'm thinking about what other projects I could do, that would utilize such a small repetitive element. Perhaps some other airport equipment might be in my future. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it!

Very nice build. The amount of functions you were able to fit in is really good for this scale, and it looks fantastic as well. Can you share any details on how the build process went? Did you start with the functions, or the looks, or a mix?

Thanks to everyone! This was my first contest and it was super fun, both my own build as well as checking out all the other builds. I cannot wait for the next contest :)

This is a nice set of questions, so here goes: 1. Yes, but it takes a while to get in the zone. Also, I feel like I make a huge amount of progress if I can work in a big block of time vs spending the same amount of time in smaller chunks. 2. Depends mostly on the available time, probably 10 hours a week spread over few evenings and weekends. 3. Yes. This is both good and bad for me. I tend to do two things: First, if I get stuck on a certain aspect of a moc and cannot progress further without a new idea or solution or ordered parts, I usually switch to another one where I can make progress. I do this because I hate being blocked, and this way I always have some project that I can work on. Secondly, I like to try out tricky parts of future builds early, so that I can figure some things out before committing to build a complex project as a whole. However, both these things mean that I have too many mocs in parallel in various stages of building, which makes it hard to focus sometimes. I'm trying to reduce the amount of WIP mocs at the moment, and also not start any big builds until others are done. 4. Not so far. I have some mocs that are "paused", but I will definitely restart and finish them eventually. 5. Leonardo has a point :) I would say that my focus shifts during a build. In the beginning, I'm really focused on making the model very nice, coming up with a nice design etc... Gradually, over time, I lose interest / patience and start to work more pragmatically towards the end to just finish the damn thing and move on. Sometimes, the details at the end suffer due to this. 6. I'm not a fast builder, so I don't set time limits for myself. Some of the more complicated projects would simply not be possible, or would not come out the way I want if I were to set time limits. In the end, it doesn't matter for me how long they take, because I just enjoy the process. 7. MOC's for now. I have only tried my hand at a C model using the Corvette, and it was much more difficult than I expected. I might try again in the future using a set which is a bit larger and has more generic parts. I'm thinking the 42108 crane might be good for this. 8. For me this depends on how much I like them and how many parts they tie up. If I like them I'll keep them around longer, and if they tie up many parts, I'll have to disassemble them sooner. Also depends on if I want to do a complementary build that goes with it. 9. Very well. I consider myself very lucky on this point, and I do get that it is not something that could be taken for granted. Recently, I got her to assist on a fun part of a project (coming soon) and she told me after that "I get now why you keep buying new parts". 10. Depends mostly on the video, I have had up to 2 GB per project up to now. 11. I keep all the WIP pictures, as I like the progress and story of the build as much as the finished model. I haven't really done video of WIP models, as I don't know how they could be integrated into a finished video or if anybody else would like to see it.

This is the skid steer loader that I built last year. It was my second build after my long dark ages. I selected the Caterpillar 226B as a reference and selected the 62.4 wheels for this build. I realized only much later that the scale (especially the width) was very challenging. If I were to build this again, I would probably compromise and make it 2 studs wider. However, the biggest challenge on this build was something unexpected: the center of gravity. I started off with the power functions battery box. Due to the size of the model, the only place to put it was at the very back. With the first mockup, it was already clear, front wheels were never going to touch the ground. To fix this, I switched to the AAA battery box, as the AAA batteries weigh much less. This improved the balance, at least it sat still on all 4 wheels. However, it still did a wheelie every time it started to drive. My final card to play was replacing the two IR receivers with an Sbrick, to have less weight at the back. This improved things to the point where I thought that the whole model could work. It was still a wheelie monster, but there was hope. After that, I revisited each part of the model and redesigned to have as much weight as possible at the front. The bucket was brick built to have more weight at the front. The forward chassis had all empty spaces possible filled with liftarms. All empty holes were filled with pins, axles. I could see that I was getting there, but had to take some more extreme measures. In some places I used two thin liftarms instead of a normal liftarm. The cabin was designed to have smaller bricks at the front and so on... It was ridiculous, but in the end, it all helped, and the balance was fixed. Here are some more pictures of the finished model: The arms and the bucket work really well and quick enough. The drive is the weak point on this model, as it is only with M motors. Driving full speed is fine, no problems there. However, they have issues starting to drive with only part throttle, especially with 1.2v rechargable batteries. Due to the balance issue, I considered abandoning this project at several points along the way. However, I'm glad that I kept going, and I'm really happy about the result. Technical details Length: 30 cm Width: 13 cm Height: 17.5 cm Weight: 1.16 kg Power functions 2 x Power Functions M motor for skid steer drive PF L motor for arm lift PF L motor for bucket tilt PF AAA Battery Box Sbrick for control Here is the video with the model in action:

Nice build, in a slightly bigger scale. I would likely use this scale for my next skid steer build, enough space for batteries and motors without being giant. Your layout is definitely better for the center of gravity, having the BB under the seat is good. It's interesting that we came to almost exactly the same solution for the bucket mechanism. I also had the issues with clearance of the bucket drive and the linear actuator. Initially, the linear actuator was attached one stud higher on the chassis. This both looks better in the lower position because it ends up horizontal and allows more lift height at the top. However, with this geometry, the linear actuator tended to run into the gears at the top of the range, so I had to lower the linear actuator attachment down by 1 stud. I think I built the arm / bucket mechanism there about 7 or 8 times before I got to this geometry and got everything working reliably without gears skipping etc...