5imon

If I'm looking at the 8448's wheels, it becomes very clear what makes them "better": their shape is very asymmetric, best seen when looking at the enlarged picture on Bricklink. With the attachment point of the wheel moved very far out of the centre plane of the wheel, the kingpin part can be placed completely inside the wheel and thus the pivot points are in the centre of the wheel. My 1970s car uses the same principle, and it's not even a high performance one (but one with very advanced suspension for its time). You can see on ths car that the wheel centres also point very much outwards, so the kingpin can be placed inside. The problem with modern Lego wheels is that they are largely symmetric, so there is no way to place the pivot points inside. The length of all the available hub/portal/kingpin parts further add to this.

Beautiful! The mudguards are brilliant, using the angled connectors for strength and the flex axles on the outside to convey the impression of a smooth curve. It's really a pity that all the tyres we have are too wide for this type of vehicle, but the 62.4 x 20 are still acceptable.

Hi -Z-, welcome to Eurobricks and good model you present here, nice and compact. The only suggestion I have is to try and make the rear part (everything that's behind the rear wheel) less box-shaped, maybe by adding some angles or curves, like you have on the side of the car.

I had this as a Matchbox car when I was a little boy. Great childhood memory popping up here! I like the smooth bodywork and, of course, the great mechanisms. Looking forward to see more functions!

Wow, this starts to look real good! I like the general body shape, it looks quite accurate. That door mechanism with the dampened spring is really great, I might use something like it in my Activa project. (btw, this one also had to be modified to incorporate a second set of springs. Seems to be a common problem with motorized vehicles of this size) I must admit that the black rims look much better than the grey ones you had before. I personally would rather want them with real tyres, however. Even better: the black ones with the white ring from 41999 - or some chromed ones.

You're right, the area between the chassis and the rear axle has bothered me as well. It's not a prime example for clean engineering and certainly not the part of the car I'm most proud of. However, it's working, thanks to the play in all components... I was already thinking of fitting one of the large hollow ball joints, but space might be too restricted. Maybe I should give it another try. Thanks miguev! If you want some more hints for replicating, you might take a look at my Bricksafe page. Or just ask me for more pics. I eventually plan to make a step-by-step photo instruction, but you probably don't want to wait that long. I don't particularly like this building style, especially for a sports car where there should be more three-dimensionally curved surfaces. But it might still be useful for some areas.

No worries Meatman, I got you right. I also found the pictures of the gearbox. But the similarity you pointed out makes me want to have a closer look at it and probably build the car.

Thanks for all your comments! This really makes me want to continue with the body! Actually, when I tried out different body areas, the #3/#4 panel fairing were the biggest parts I used. I don't think it will get much bigger... The white flex axles are alredy waiting for their assignment ;-) However, as I don't like designs with different wheel sizes front and back, I will stick to 43.2 x 22. Thanks Paul for this hint! It shows that you have much more experience with this type of building than I have. But it's an easy fix and I will implement it before continuing. Actually the performance was really a bit weak in the lower gears and I couldn't find out why. Probably it will improve. Of course, use whatever you like! I don't claim to have invented any of the stuff I show here. See Meatman's comment... I've never really looked at the Muscle Car before. But you're right; it seems that Paul and me had the same idea here. (Probably a good reason to buy that instruction from Paul as well ;-)

The recent discussion about what makes a supercar reminded me of some photos I still had on my computer, but never published. They are from a project I started last year, but interrupted for my TC6 attempt. The question at the beginning of this project was: how compact can a supercar be? (or rather, how compact can I make it, I'm sure the cracks out here can do better than me). The question about what a supercar does have to have I answered for myself: 4 suspended wheels, independently would be nice At least 2 wheels driven, with differential Steering with HoG and working steering wheel Fake engine with at least 6 cylinders Gearbox with min. 4 gears Sportscar body Some detailing in the interior (seats, basic dashboard). Starting point was the 43.2 x 22 ZR tyrewhich should determine the car's size. So it's going to be really smaller than the typical supercar. Regarding the proportions, I wanted to do something that resembles '70s / '80s sportscars with mid-engine layout. One thing I especially had in mind was my childhood favourite Lamborghini Countach which I still consider unmatched by al its modern Audi remakes. From it, I was going to take the long wheelbase and low silhouette. What also made me stick to an older design style is the fact that wheels were generally a bit smaller back then, so the car could be a tad bigger with the same tyre size. As Crowkillers recently menitoned in a thread I don't remember, the starting point of building a supercar often is the gearbox. This was also the case for my project. I started with the box from N. Kuipers' Pony Car (which inspired me also in other ways, we'll see later), a reasonably small 4-speed setup. However, using it in my small scale as a central console would have placed the gear lever next to the driver's ear. So I decided to flatten the gearbox and lay all 4 axles in one plane, the box thus serving as the main part of the floorpan: From the back, it becomes obvious how the transmission to the engine is built as a kind of rear bulkhead where a lot of the other components will attach. It also becomes obvious that the engine will be mounted quite high, above the rear axle: To this central part of the car comes a second large module, containing th front axle, steering, dashboard and gearbox cover. I tried to keep the whole front axle really compact in order to gain the maximum freedom for the front part design. The HoG (black gear) will be operated through the windshield. From the back, the central console and funky futuristic '80 style dashboard becomes visible: These two units join to form the car's main structure: As a rear axle, I first tried an independently sprung setup, but with the parts available (like universal or CV joints) it always turned out way too wide. So I used a live axle instead, not very typical for a sportscar, I know. But another part that draws inspiration from Kuipers' Pony Car. However, instead of the 6L links, I had to use something smaller... This is how it looks with the axle (and seats) attached: The engine is pretty much standard, except it's a boxer (or rather 180° V) layout which is rather rarely used. But placing it above the rear axle, it had to be flat. And as a boxer fan, it was a logical step anyway. Some shots of the completed chassis, showing also the rear suspension: For the time being, the project is interrupted, but I'd love to complete it with a body. I already tried some ideas, but never finished anything. Colour will most probably be white, the wheels already give a hint to this. Comments and suggestions (especially concerning the bodywork) are appreciated. Thanks for watching and reading!

Very recognizeable! Looking forward to seeing a chassis with a nice boxer engine.

mpfirnhaber, my bricks aren't labeled. With the grid I used for the display it's easy to track down the right colour of each part – and the grid is noted in a spreadsheet, as you suspected. I have to admit however that after collecting the bricks for a while and storing them without labeling I had some trouble remembering which was which. Fortunately I keep good record of my orders on BL, so in the end I was able to deduce all the colours in the style of "if I have three 1x2 bricks and a slope, it must be colour X". BTW, congratulations on your 62 colours of 2x4 bricks, I'm only at 57 with the 1x2's (but still growing ;-). Some of the bricks you posted in the "rare parts" thread I could acutally use very well for my display, like the yellowish green or the flat silver one...

Thanks kinggregus, I'm glad you liked the display. Why I used black... I think it makes the colours look brighter and stand out more. Except maybe for the very light ones, like e.g. light violet, which become hard to distinguish from white or very light grey. But with a white background you'd have a similar problem with the dark colours. Other reasons were that black parts don't have different yellowed shades and I had more of them already available. But in the end it's just a matter of personal taste; I ike black more than white. (Btw. I also considered lbg, being more neutral...) Ah yes, I used some white parts as well: they're behind the transparent samples because in front of black they'd look too dark.

Funny to see that quite a few here also love old cars. For me it's Citroëns from the 70s and 80s. I have a 1975 GS (smallish fastback sedan with air cooled 4-cylinder boxer engine and hydropneumatic suspension) which right now is undergoing restoration. Hope to have it back on the road in 2–3 years. But my hobby that I invest most time in is singing. I have sung in choirs since my childhood and currently are in a small choir of quite high level where I'm also in charge of the finances.

I have already seen some of these. There are very interesting projects out there, and I have no reason to feel bad about mine being small(ish). It is exactly what I want for my purpose. And of course it's not meant as a reference for use over the screen, as I'm fully aware of the problems of reproducing colours on different screens vs. reality – especially taken into account the difficult light situation I had when photographing the displays. This is true indeed. With this display it's not easy to directly compare two or more colours. Making some sliding mechanism is too complicated for my purpose and would block even more parts that I'd rather use for MOCing. But of course the pieces I have in the display do come off and back on, it's the very nature of Lego and I didn't use Kragle ;-) But kidding aside, I have duplicates (or even more) of most of the coloured bits, so I still have somthing to hold together and compare without disassembling the display. Of course, being a colour addict means I have read a lot about these things and use them when choosing colour combinations, perhaps often even inconciously. However, so far I rarely use the fancier colours in MOCs, as I'm mostly building technic, where the palette is quite limited. Very interesting colours you show here. Really a pity the palette got so restricted in the later years. But there might also be a good point about this: with only 7 colours you are less likely to end up with a lot of different colours that you can hardly use for building because you only have 2 or 3 bricks of each...

Thanks for this deeper insight, Lego Historian. Seems that it's still one of the less common cars, and of the colours you mentioned, I think light grey is the nicest and fits the DS shape very well. Mine has some brownish spots on the grey body, but otherwise I think it's in a quite decent condition. All parts there, wheels firmly attached and the windows are only slightly yellowed and scratched.

SwissBrickPlanet, as mentioned by miguev, is by far the largest store in Siwtzerland. I've found a lot of parts here. I have also shopped at http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=blaupapaya1 and http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=Brickych and was not disappointed. Generally I just look who has the parts I need, be it in Switzerland or outside. Most older or rarer parts can hardly be found locally, so you have to resort to other countries. If you live close to the border, you still have the possibility to have the goods sent to an address in an EU country and bring them in by yourself, so you save a lot on customs fees.

Amazing! Every time I see a car like this, I feel like I have to go into studded / model team much more than I currently do. I just like all these details.

This starts looking very good, detailed and colourful, as others remarked before. I always liked the S2000, so I'm looking forward to seeing one built in Lego.

Congratulations to all the contestants! I tried but could not finish my entry on time, so I know what an effort it is to participate, even if you don't score many points. Unforunately I didn't have enough time to really dedicate the time to watch all the videos and study the entries, so I didn't vote. There were just too many great entries for a quick decision. I hope that soon we will see another great contest, I might give it another try.

While the optics are debatable, the differential concept is certainly interesting. It reminds me a little of "torque vectoring" that is used in some high performance cars.

Hi Nick, great to see you here on Eurobricks! I was always an admirer of your Citroën models (and all the others as well, of course!). Also here, I'm not at all disappointed to not see a 3000+ parts monster crane, but a very compact model with clean lines that shows what can be done even on this small scale. Very well done!

Growing up in a family of painters (craftsmen as well as artists), I soon developped a fascination for colours, and besides Lego, drawing and painting was one of my big topics in my childhood. Also later I became a real colour aficionado, not fitting in the "men can only distinguish 8 colours" stereotype... So when I came back to Lego, I was naturally fascianted by the wide range of available colours, compared to my boy's Lego in the '80s. Soon I developped the urge to collect these colours, all of them that are in the Bricklink list! I know of the flaws of this system as well as all the others that are around (see the Peeron conversion table with all its loose ends). But in the end I had to choose one system that is most convenient for my purpose, the purpose being "buying stuff on Bricklink". But what to do with all these colourful bricks? Then I had an idea: why not display them in an orderly fashion? As a starting point, I took 1x2 bricks, as these are available in a broad variety of colours and also have a nice smooth surface large enough to really get an impression of the colour. Then I put them in a frame according to their colour names. For the plain colours, I took the rows for the basic colour (i.e. black, red, blue, turquoise, pink, etc.) and the columns for the varieties of the base (dark, bright, light, sand, etc.). Things like olive green, sky blue, reddish brown I took as a separate basic colour, as "olive", "sky" or "reddish" aren't commonly used prefixes. This is the result so far, still having some dark bluish grey bricks as placeholders for colours I couldn't find so far in a part that fits into the display: Of course, I had to cheat sometimes, using several smaller parts to create a 1x2 surface, or having larger parts sticking out to the back. I also suspect there are placeholders that will never be replaced by the real thing... There is also a second display for the transparent, glittery, glossy and other special colours. Here I took the hue (red, yellow, blue etc.) as columns and in the rows I placed the group, like transparent, chrome, milky, speckle etc. For some of the groups I had to create multiple rows for different brightnesses: So as you see, this is still a "work in progress" and it will most probably stay for a long time. But I already enjoy looking at it and having a good colour reference to compare all the parts in my collection of which I don't remember the correct colour any more.

I don't have really old stuff like PA bricks or the like. There might still be some bricks from the seventies in my parents' house (from our childhood), but I don't have them in my current collection which is more focused around studless Technic. However, I have collected a few parts in rare / non regular colours: The 2x4 brick top left is form the Allianz Arena model in the german Legoland, according to the Bricklink seller. It's a kind of "glitter milky white" colour. And I also have one really old "part": Which might not be the most extraordinary or rare of H0 Lego cars, but I stumbled upon it in a Bricklink shop where I bought other stuff, and as a Citroën and Lego aficionado, I just had to have this one.

Looks like we have a real flex axle master here!

It is actually a part that comes very handy, and it has already helped me a lot in newer MOCs. However, I find it not very comfortable to work with. When trying to push it in a pin hole, you can only grab it by the round part, and it slips out of alignment very easily. This is more accentuated when working in tight spaces or when the pin hole part of it is already attached to something.