Ralph_S

Have you tried contacting Brickish? I am a member but am no longer in the UK, so I can't help you there, but they do have a website and contact addresses on it. Cheers, Ralph

I'll be blunt here, if there is no profit to be made, I don't see the point in selling MOCs -unless I'd be in pretty serious financial trouble, I suppose. I can't really judge the value of people's MOCs. I prefer to build my own stuff, so for me to be remotely interested in a MOC, it would have to have a fantastic parts collection for a price that is comparable (preferably less) than I;d pay for those parts on bricklink. Some people are indeed a little nutty when it comes to Star Wars, and frankly, I was amazed that the store in London figured they could sell my LEGO Routemaster buses for £100. I myself wouldn't pay £100 for one Cheers, Ralph

AussieJimbo, I'm glad to see you went ahead with the long-nose truck. I built a LEGO road train together with a friend of mine a few years ago and that had a prime mover based on a long-nose Ford LTL 9000 with a tri-drive. COE trucks might not be unusual nowadays -I don't know- but when I think of a road train I think of a long-nose truck based on an American design. Your model captures that look nicely. Cheers, Ralph

Cafe corner compatible buildings got me back into building town, so it probably won't come as a surprise that I prefer to build complete buildings, with backs and stairs and everything. It does cost many more parts, but in my opinion the end result is worth it. The buildings look decent from just about any angle, including the back. I also enjoy building interiors -even if you don't really see much of them when the building is put together. I don't 'play' with my models, so easy access is not a priority. Here are two examples showing the front and back of my chip shop and curry house. High Street (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr High Street (2) by Mad physicist, on Flickr The large windows in the ground floor mean you get a view of the interior of both and I spent a lot f time making that look nice. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks guys. I am glad you like it. This was actually a pretty quick build by my standards. I often spend weeks planning and thinking about the things I build. From start to finish, this truck only took a few days. I considered a few different ideas for the build challenge including a Baja race car, but settled on a Dakar truck after seeing a programme on it on TV. I always try to figure out how to build certain parts that I reckon will be difficult before I start building -the cage and mudguards in this case- and I ran into very few problems once I finally started putting bricks together. It was done in a few hours. By the way, I wasn't aware that Playmobil have a Dakar truck -I always go straight to the LEGO section Cheers, Ralph

I'm not an economist, but there is more to the value of a product than the amount of work and material that goes into it. It is also determined by what people are willing to pay for it and I suspect that in many cases with LEGO models the latter amount is less than the former. I get requests by people who want to buy some of my MOCs on a fairly regular basis. I always turn them down and one of the reasons why is because they are unlikely willing to pay enough to make it worth my while. I had an offer of $200 for my Chinook, for instance. Old dark grey is getting harder to get hold of nowadays, so I probably wouldn't be able to buy the parts for it for that amount, but since they are parts I gathered over a longer period of time they didn't cost me $200 to buy all in all. However, I probably spent about 30 hours building the thing. If I were to charge $10 an hour (which is a hell of a lot less than I make in my day job) that alone would be $300 and nobody is likely to pay that much. There are some people who manage to sell custom kits and make a profit. One strategy for doing this is by keeping the fixed costs associated with designing them down by producing the kits in question in numbers of several dozens. Despite this, if you compare the prices for these sets to sets produced by LEGO you'll see that they are considerably higher for their parts count. Several copies of one of my other models have been on display at a toy store in London and they got many requests by customers about buying them. The store manager figures they could probably sell them at £100 each, but with the parts costing about £80 on bricklink, the time it would take me to buy the parts, and the time it would take me to make instructions for it and to modify the design such that it wouldn't be quite as fragile as it is now, they'd probably have to sell about a 100 to make it remotely profitable for me (and I've already got a job). In other terms, unless you get lucky, you'll likely make a loss if you try to sell your MOCs. Cheers, Ralph

I didn't realise I was a bigshot -certainly not on EB Anyway, I think that no matter how hard the moderators may try to be give a nice and balanced view of MOCs on the front-page, there will always be a degree of subjectivity involved, both in their choices and in your own. You may feel that some great MOCs are overlooked, but to other people they might not look all that brilliant. Different people see different things. For instance, I've had MOCs blogged on The Brothers Brick that were hardly noticed on EB -let alone on the frontpage. Similarly, I have a had a few MOCs frontpaged on EB that weren't picked up by the Brothers brick. Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. The protective cage was the first part I designed. I did want the cab to look like a cab on a regular truck, but also not too much! I needed something to make it more interesting and make it look like a racer and most of the real trucks have something something similar. I don't remember ever using minifig chairs for this purpose before I built this truck, but they do seem to work rather well on this. Thanks. Thank you. I guess it depends on the type of mudguards you;re trying to model. I've used flags for the rear mudguards or mudflaps on trucks before. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks guys. While I appreciate the sentiment, there's no need to wish me luck. The build challenges are not contests. It's all just for fun. Lightningtiger, I do quite like trucks and that probably helps. The inverted construction that holds on the seats/mudguard uses a few technic plates on the inside of the truck like this one: The half stud offsets are done using jumper plates on the front mudguard and 1x1 plates stuck into the bottom of the seats at the rear. Cheers, Ralph

As some of you may know, LUGNuts -THE group for LEGO car lovers on flickr- has monthly challenges. This month, the challenge is titled Octan Racing. Members are to build a vehicle for a racing team for LEGO's own oil company. You may already have seen J4ke's entry. He and I had similar source of inspiration: the Dakar Rally. I chose to build a truck. By the way, I posted it in the town forum because Racers generally aren't minifig scale and because the cab is based on cabs of LEGO city trucks, with a few twists, obviously. The model is loosely based on a Dutch GINAF Rally truck and the real trucks use the same basic cab as commercial trucks as well, but with a bespoke 4WD chassis. Enough talk already, time for some pictures! Octan Dakar race truck (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Octan Dakar race truck (3) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Octan Dakar race truck (2) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Octan Dakar race truck (4) by Mad physicist, on Flickr The stickers come from a variety of different sets, but mainly from the Twin Extreme IR remote control racers set. I have had one of those for a while now, but parted it put straight away and didn't realise until I looked it up right now that one of the models you can build with it is an off-road racing truck as well. Still, mine looks better IMO the stickers are fantastic . My hat is off to the people at LEGO who designed them. The brand names are completely fictional, but I think you will agree that the logos and graphics look as though they could easily be real. On flickr I've been getting a lot of comments on the use of minifig seats for the mudguards. It was my idea to do it on this truck, obviously, but I feel I should point out that the idea of using seats as mudguards isn't mine. I have no idea who did it first, but I've seen it done many times by different people. Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. Indeed, if you consider that this car entered production in 1955 it's pretty amazing. An aunt of mine used to have one for a few years and the ride felt like a magic carpet. Thanks. It was a difficult build and I wouldn't have chosen to build a DS myself, but I am very happy with the result. Thank you. The shape was a challenge, obviously, but I really like to have opening features as well. Almost all of my cars on this scale have them and I didn't want this one to be an exception. It did make the build considerably more complicated, of course, but worth while in the end. Thanks for your comments. Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. I didn't want to settle for building just the shape of the car. I felt it had to have working features and I spent quite a bit of time on getting the details, such as the spare tyre, right. It is a smaller diameter than the wheels on the car, unfortunately, but I didn't have room for anything bigger. This is definitely not a Technic model, but this is the Technic, Mindstorms and Model Team forum and I think it fits the latter category better than anything else on EB. Before anybody asks, it does have a steering mechanism, albeit not connected to the steering wheel. It's not town either, if you ask me, because it isn't remotely minifig scale. Cheers, Ralph

How odd. It said 999 this morning. Well, in that case this is my 1000th post Cheers, Ralph

In the last few days I've seen several MOCs being posted from this month's build challenge on LUGNuts, the flickr group for LEGO car enthusiasts. I haven't had much time to build anything in the last six weeks or so, but as one of the admins of the group I felt I had to build something. The challenge was to build a car that was assigned to you, rather than something of your own choosing. The car assigned to me was a classic French Citroën DS -a rather tricky bit of automotive history. Citroën DS (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr The DS had almost completely enclosed rear wheels. On my model the thickness of the rear panel unfortunately means that the track width at the rear is rather narrow. I could have made the panels thinner if I wouldn't have chosen a version with a chrome strip running down the side. Oh well... You can't have everything. Citroën DS (4) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Building the shape of the car was tricky enough, but I also wanted opening features, as on most of my cars. The hood (bonnet) is the party piece. On the real car it basically wraps around the windscreen. I couldn't quite manage that on this scale, so instead the aft part of the hood slides underneath the windscreen on my model. When opening the hood, I need to first pull it forward and then I can hinge it up. Citroën DS (7) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Of course, the doors and the trunk (boot) can also be opened. The car has a reasonably detailed interior, which is almost invisible, unfortunately. Citroën DS (8) by Mad physicist, on Flickr On the one hand I felt lucky with this assignment, because it is a beautiful car that doesn't look out of place in my collection. On the other hand it was a complete and utter bastard to build. Anyway, I am glad with how it turned out and hope you guys (and galls) like it too. Almost entirely but not quite by coincidence this is my 1000th post on EB. I'm not a particularly prolific poster -having joined more than five years ago- but let's just say I prefer quality over quantity. Cheers, Ralph

Perhaps I should have been clearer: I think both trucks are a bit too tall compared to their width. I'm no stranger to building fire engines and I have the impression that the real vehicles of this type are about as wide as they are tall -which is confirmed by the pictures zeki linked to in the thread about his other truck. I'm not too bothered about the length. Even using these doors, which indeed are quite tall (which is why make my own doors), I think it would be possible to shave at least two and probably three plates off in height without having to give up too much detail. Cheers, Ralph

I like fire engines and these are both nice vehicles, with many neat little details. I do think they're a bit tall compared to the reference picture in the other thread. I'm guessing this is at least partially the result of the space needed to fit figures in the cab. Zeki, do you have the intention of building a fire station for them as well? Cheers, Ralph

I don't actually have the speed-control remote. On my trucks it is all or nothing! Whether you have enough space or not obviously depends on the configuration. I tend to build model team vehicles rather than technic-style. This means I tend to hide the technical bits and I can't imagine being able to do that with 'shock absorbers'. Here's a picture of my FDNY fire truck showing how compact the steering mechanism is. It's fairly long, obviously, but it's mostly hidden inside the chassis -with the motor sitting pretty much where the gearbox would on the real truck. Since the truck has a working tilt cab, I felt this was important. FDNY Fire engine rebuilt by Mad physicist, on Flickr I have heard people complain of motors overheating, but haven't noticed any such problems myself, probably because I don't drive the vehicles for very long. It obviously does drain the batteries. It may be possible to prevent this by combining the hockey-spring and the white torque gear, but setting it up such that the hockey spring doesn't make the gear slip might be tricky. I had a little go at trying to get this to work when I built LURCH (a PF RC neo-classic space vehicle) almost two years ago, but I felt it caused me more trouble than it was worth. By the way, the reason why I put parentheses around shock absorbers is because the part in question might be called a shock absorber, but actually isn't. Cheers, Ralph

Indeed. There are more ways to make self centring steering than with the hockey spring I mentioned in the discussion I linked to as well as at the start of the discussion you linked to. The topic has come up several times more in other threads as well. I prefer the self-centring set-up with the hockey spring. I've never tried using technic 'shock absorbers' before, but looking at it I'd say it takes up rather a lot of space -which I normally don't have on the vehicles I build. It requires a special part, obviously, but it is also very compact. Cheers, Ralph

No problem. The image in my first post is clickable and brings to you straight to the matching bricklink page. Cheers, Ralph

I don't have instructions for any of my PF remote controlled trucks, but there are two lines of thought on PF steering. The part that prevents your steering system from pulling itself to bits is this one The gear starts to slip relative to the axle if more than a particular amount of torque is generated. That means that if you incorporate it into your steering system and the steering hits its stop, the gear starts slipping. Doublebricks, a Russian LEGO users group organise a competition called the Hard Truck Contest, which involves racing PF trucks and they've got instructions for the chassis on their website. However, I have experimented with a similar system several years ago and found it awkward. The fire engine I built was fine for driving around in circles, but was terrible at driving in a straight line. Lowering the speed at which the steering moved from full lock in one direction to the other made driving in a straight line a bit easier, but made it awkward in corners. It was just no good. A friend of mine (Mark Bellis) gave me a tip on how to build on self-centering steering mechanism. I've explained it (including a link to instructions on brickshelf that somebody else made) on EB before. I've since built several vehicles with this mechanism and modified my fire engine with it as well. You can see the latest truck I built with it in action on flickr. Cheers, Ralph

Very impressive MOC, Колпак. The interior detail on the lower floor in particular is very well done and you seem to have slightly warped sense of humour with your toxic waste The only thing that in my opinion lets it down a bit is the car. I'm going against the choir here, but to me it looks a bit awkward and rather big for the road. Perhaps it's because is supposed to represent some Russian car that I don't know. Cheers, Ralph

It has of sorts. BrickWild has apparently edited the first post and added 'Respect to tehLEGOman (aka AccurateIn)!' to it. That wasn't there when I saw the pictures yesterday. I can't help but feel that if nobody would have made remarks about the similarities to the existing design by AccurateIn, that sentence wouldn't have been there now either! Brickwild, I don't think there are many people who would mind somebody else creating a copy of one of their MOCs in LDD, but I do feel that not attributing the original creator is big no-no and not bothering to answer questions about it other than by adding a sentence to the post after the fact is not cool. I think it's not the first time you've done this either. Ralph

Nice, but are they your design? Just this morning I was looking at ambulances on flickr. I have a thing for emergency vehicles myself. I found these two. LEGO City Ambulance by tehLEGOman, on Flickr 008 by tehLEGOman, on Flickr They look rather similar to your LDD models, don't you think? AFAIK, 'tehLEGOman' on flickr is known as AccurateIn on EB... Ralph

I like road trains and yours is a very original modification of the original sets, AussieJimbo. I understand that you wanted to stick close to the original and stuck to a cab over engine design because of that, but I'm not so sure I like the three stacked roof pieces. It leaves a few funny gaps on the side and makes the cab so big that the tanks look a bit small IMO. Other people have already mentioned that turning it into a long-nose truck would be nice, and I agree. I'd love to see this with a truck more along the lines of the new LEGO truck. If you feel you'd like to step a bit further away from the sets, I have a few suggestions. One of the things common to road trains as far as I know them is the big bull bar on the front. There actually is a part for it, but it looks a bit clunky IMO and attaching it neatly might be difficult. I'd try something with bars/ flex tube, some droid arms, and clips if I were to do it myself. The second suggestion has to do with how the wheels stick out from under the mudguards. The width of the vehicle including the wheels is 7 studs, but only the front wheels are properly covered by mudguards. All the other wheels have mudguards that are only 6 studs wide. The original set also has this and it just doesn't look right to me. (It's the reason why my own minifig scale trucks tend to have aft bodies or trailers that are 7 studs wide.) There is a fairly straightforward solution for it on these trailers: plate with door-rail. If you add a layer of those underneath the white tiles that make up the mudguards now it raises the tanks slightly (reducing the height difference between the tanks and the cab) and means you have better-looking mudguards. Either way, it's already quite a nice model as is. Cheers, Ralph

Turning a black box on wheels into something interesting certainly presents a challenge. I have my own SWAT van, which I built about a year ago and which is the main reason why this thread caught my attention. I solved the issue of having a large uninterrupted black surface on the side by filling it with SNOT-built SWAT lettering. I didn't want to use a sticker either. However, it's complicated, takes up interior space and requires a marginally longer vehicle. One more suggestion: if you don't want to get rid of them, at least replace the 1x4 tiles on the sides by 1x6 tiles. If they fill up the space between the wheel arches a bit better, you will still have the added 'beefiness', but the tiles will look less like tacked on random bits. I understand why you used the 1x4x2 fences. Riot control vans in the Netherlands also have similar protective grids over their side-windows. I still don't like the grill tile or the ladder piece (I wouldn't put an air-conditioning unit on the side of a van), but I'll accept them as artistic license. Cheers, Ralph