Rudivdk

Not in this setup with the 3l axles as pistons. The crankshaft is as low as possible without colliding to the rear axle underneath. Only option is to use an engine design similar to @apachaihapachai's F355, which uses 2l as pistons. It would lower the top of the engine with 1l. I'll give it a try to see how it looks.

Added the engine cover, looks more balanced now IMHO:

Did anyone see the April fools joke Nathan pulled on Rebrickable? He put a front page article stating that Guangdong Loongon (the holding owning Lepin) had acquired Rebrickable, and was now owner of the website and all MOC designs and contents therein... Got me scared sh*tless for a few moments

@Jim, you might wanna remove the TC17 'Mad Max' reference in the opening post of the TC18 entry topic, it will confuse people...

I think I´m done... First some pics of the finished 'naked' chassis (all the pins and axles protruding everywhere are for bodywork attachment). It is really rigid (it's becoming a trademark I think...), and the interior+bodywork adds even more strength later on, especially in the middle section. It features: Independent double wishbone suspension on all wheels Front wheels with offset pushrod setup Rear wheels with classic vertical spring setup Rear axle has floating 'diff' Steering via steering wheel (no gears used!) Fake mini V6 engine in the back, directly driven from rear wheels The build The biggest challenge was the front suspension: Since I wanted a low front end for the car, vertical springs was not an option. So horizontal with pushrods. But the springs are too long to be mounted side by side, and so I ended up with offset springs mounted alongside each other. I think this setup would only work at a model this small, on bigger, heavier models with harder springs a lot of bending forces will come in to play disrupting the functionality. In the rear I just could not get a full diff between the wheels, so it's just a 90-degree drive transfer cage, mimicking a floating diff: Rest of the setup is pretty straightforward, with 2 lower arms and 1 upper arm. Here is all the interior and bodywork parts layed out. It comes together almost modular: First I'll add the interior. It's a single seater vehicle, with low windscreen and big rollbar behind the driver. Of course some proper dashboard with 'instruments' is in front of the driver: After all bodywork is attached, this is the final product: I'm still thinking about adding a (partial) engine cover to make the engine blend in a little more. Right now it has a very high 'Hotwheels' feel to it...

Nope, 'old' 3wide DBG diff...

It has the TC18 tag in the title, so I guess he's in...

Nice suspension solution! I have the narrow Corvette tires and it was already challenging to get it to fit in 15 wide... Good luck, hope to see more of these smart solutions

Another iconic car. This contest is getting better and better by the minute! Good luck, will follow your progress.

Iconic car, nice choice! Will follow this with interest.

Maybe move the 'liftback' sides a bit backwards and change the front part of the gearbox cover to DBG to mimic some rear seat? Unless you got a folding roof hidden somewhere in there as well... Overall, really nice looking car, boxy style is smart solution for this scale as it gives you more space to work with inside the car. Looking forward to the brickbuilt version!

My kids have loads of hotwheels racers laying around the house, so unconsiously I might have been a bit influenced by that style....

Thanx, seems this scale opens up new possibilities for a number of parts. But I kinda stole the idea from @Charbel's wacky race car a few years back... I was aiming for one of those extreme single-seaters, but your description is also cool Probably yes, options in this scale are very limited... I changed the arms to 4long, but the setup is almost the only possibility for independent with drive. And you can't even properly fit a diff... At least the front is different and less standard. More pics of that later.

Picture doesn't show for me either... curious about this one, as I'm building independent suspension all around as well. I ditched the diff very early on, just too wide...

After a good few hours of building I have something presentable. I call it 'Dart'. Bodywork inspired by the style of cars like Lotus 2/3-Eleven, BAC Mono and KTM X-Bow: It features all wheel independent double wishbone suspension. Front suspension has pushrods, Front axle is steered via the steering wheel using a mechanism similar to the Corvette. Rear axle has classic 'standing' spring layout. It also has a floating 'diff' (actually not a diff but just drive transfer cage). I'm gonna rebuild the rear suspension, maybe try a pushrod setup as well to see how that behaves, and put a mini-engine on top. If that gets too bulky, I might omit the engine and go for an 'electric' car, maybe mock up an electric motor somewhere. I have to put some interior to it, and finish up the chassis and body on the right side and rear of the car. Still in doubt about rear wing or not, maybe I'll make a split wing (right side and left side, but nothing in the middle). I will post some more details of the chassis when I make the final version, the current version is quite messy and very WIP when it comes to stiffness of the whole thing...

I'm in. Got some ideas for suspension and drive already, no idea about body style yet though. Time to play!

Nice one, great bunch of builds you got there. And as mentioned above: LEGO, and also humor, are the perfect pass-time in these days.

I saw it on RB already, great job by your son! Seeing it in his hands makes me realize again that it is a REALLY big plane (I dismantled mine during the instruction-making) For me it moved pretty fluently, but only after quite some tinkering. Getting the exact length of the 32l axle correct is a guessing game, and can only be done by trail and error. And since the total linkage-system towards the rudders has a lot of joints and pivot points, it gets jammed pretty quick. Smart solution to add the little knob wheel, it's hardly visible and solves the playability issue!

Have you also built the model in real life? I see you are using LDCad. What I always do is disassemble the reallife model in small steps. Every few parts I take off, I put in a 'step' in LDCad. When you take off a subassembly, put that in a step inside a submodel in LDCad and do the part by part stepping inside that submodel. So you can get your entire stepping done. Then load the 'stepped' file in LPub3D and watch the magic happen I always edit a lot in LPub3D afterwards as well, just to make it look pretty. See here for an example .mpd file with LPub3D code in it, and here (scroll to bottom) for the resulting instructions after LPub3D editing. Be sure to also snoop around in the digital building sub-forum here on EB, lots of useful info over there. Good luck!

If it is a vehicle specific to FF9, I think it will move along with the movie release date. If it is a 'generic' FF type car, it is not necessary to postpone the release. Probably the FF-copyright owners have a say in it as well...

@ifilin I'm glad to hear you (and your son) like it! I hope you were able to build without problems or errors in the instructions sofar? Looking forward to see your version completed

You could append that version to the original RB entry as additional/alternative file. That way you can still expose them both.

@ifilin great, hope you guys have fun building it! If it is not too much trouble, please share some pictures on Rebrickable once done.

The final instructions and parts list are now available on Rebrickable: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-36127/Rudivdk/lockheed-martin-p38-white-lightnin/ This time I choose to charge a small amount (€7,-) for instructions, to cover for all the time not spent on my wife and kids while making them...

I solved that by having my own Lego in a separate 'dad's room' on the attic of the house. They know that they can look, not take. And buying them their own Lego sets also helps deflecting their attention from mine... I have a wall full of little wooden drawers (IKEA Moppe, 32 6drawer units) to sort all my ~120k parts. But my desk is always still full of bits and pieces, and fully covered with (discarded) pieces and assemblies when I am full-steam MOCcing. WIP and finished MOCs are kept on a few shelves above my desk. I usually sort all loose pieces and disassembled MOCs into a single tray every few days, and when the tray is full, it is time to sort into the drawer system, which can be in a few days also, or after weeks. Rare or ultra-usefull parts I keep out of the generic sorting tray, and keep them either on my desk or put them straight into the storage drawers so I can find them. So all-in-all an untidy builder with a tidy storage.