erix

This set has a lot of nice parts and if it were marketed as a small “Supercar” it would probably receive less hate. We have a saying in the automotive industry: “You can’t polish a turd.” The grotesque bulbous blob with random angles that the corvette has become in recent years is very much an overripe turd. You can’t make a good looking version of that car with Lego in any scale! i will buy at least one of these sets as the price is good for the parts and i can probably make a much nicer looking car using just these parts. My only wish is that the licensing fee portion of my purchase doesn’t go to chevy to reward them for building such an ugly car.

Target stores have been carrying several Technic sets for the past year. Over Christmas I saw 42039 in one store in Minneapolis. Our local store currently keeps 42040, 42037, 42036, 42032, and 42031 on the shelves..

This doesn't look like the 24hr car suspension at all. That car uses the old dark gray "a-arm" style, this one appears to use the single arm style as used in the snowmobile model. Also, take a look at the closeup view of the front wheel: where are the steering knuckles of the big gray hub? This might be using the same little hub that the snowmobile used as well.

I found some gold wheels and thought I'd try a JPS version of the cart. I replaced everything I could with black parts. Mocking up the curved panels with arms makes the cart look pretty chunky but it kinda reminds me of old F1 cars from the 70s. Hopefully we get some black, white, and red curved panels soon...

I really like this set but the steering bothers me. The large turning radius is unfortunate but the notchy feel of the floppy orange steering lever is less than race-ready. I appreciate the unusual design detail of the mechanism but in racing, function always precedes form! Here is a quick and easy steering mod that makes turning smoother and tightens the radius a little bit. Take out these parts: Next, get a gear rack and some other parts and put them on like this: Get a big tan gear and put it where the steering flapper was: Note you need to replace the 9-stud on top with (2) 3-studs to allow room for the gear: This is a great set, let's see some other mods!!

Awesome! That looks great - and cute at the same time!

I can't wait to see that, rhplus!

Thanks for the comments! The model has been around three years, not two as I orginally thought. Yesterday it was dropped and too much trouble to put back together so now only these photographs remain! I guess it was time for it to go. ok, erix

I'm embarrased to say this model has been around for over two years. I never thought of showing it but agrof's Class 1 buggy made me want to show it as the Baja Boot, built in 1967, could be considered the very first purpose-built off-road race car. Built in secret by Vic Hickey, an independent inventor and engineer who built special projects for GM, with access to GM's latest technology, the Baja Boot was unlike anything else raced down the Baja peninsula. It had a steel tube space frame with a 450HP mid-engined small block V8 mated to the then-new TH400 automatic transmission. A Dana 18 transfer case sent the power to Corvette independent differentials at each end wich terminated in disc brakes and giant 36" tall Goodyear tires suspended from Oldsmobile Toronado FWD hubs. Torsion bars were used instead of coil or leaf springs. This model doesn't have torsion bar suspension, motors, remote control, or even (very) functional steering. It was built for display, hence the dust! The battery box is the perfect scale for he orginal's gas tank. I had to make many trips to the Bricklink well for this model... Buried in the frame is a V8 engine that turns with the wheels. Nowadays you couldn't run the radiator unprotected like this! There's a few studded parts in this model. Differentials front and rear with Sariel's two-speed transmission is in the middle. The steering is pretty janky but it works. Not as heavy as the Unimog but not a lightweight model for sure! The Boot began it's racing career at the second ever Baja 1000 in 1968 after being purchased by Steve McQueen. It was raced competitively until 1980. It won the Baja 500 in 1969 and participated in many of off-road racing's most famous events including multiple Baja events and the Mint 400 in my home town of Las Vegas. A great history of the car, as well as lots of pictures, can be found here! Larger pictures can be found in my Bricklink folder here! ok, erix

This is beautiful! Can't wait to see what you do with the rest.

As much fun as I had in that car there are no pictures of it. Probably a good thing. I had a *LOT* of fun in that car!

Nice work so far! Excellent suspension! How did you know I used to have one of these too? It was an SS, 283-2V, ridiculously low without air or hydraulics, about 1985 or so. Jeez I'm old....

Nice work! That's a hard hood to model in Lego, so is the roof. It's amazing how many contours are on those trucks that you don't see until you have to wet sand one prior to paint!

I got an 8048 Buggy for Christmas and that brought me out of the dark ages and into technic at the same time. Within a week of getting it I already created my first MOC!

Oops! I misspoke! I did use one fat cylinder on each end, not the skinny cylinder. Looks like the difference in diameter of the bore radically changes the delivered force, check this online calculator: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/pneumatic-cylinder-force-d_1273.html Doubling the diameter of the piston quadruples the force!

The center cylinder worked well but there was a lot of stress on the liftarms and axle that was connected to the shocks. They both would bend an small but unsettling amount! I'm surprised two small cylinders weren't able to lift your front end, a single one was able to move the whole Unimog, cab and all, up and down, even without mechanical advantage. I did see Do'c - too cool! Wish he'd show the guts....

I love this build! I had a 66 SWB for a few years that was stupid low - without bags - and I miss it very much. You picked a hard body to model! I bagged the Unimog a while ago: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=57543&st=1500#entry1738577

In the US there is open desert racing like the Baja 1000, Mint 400, and other races. S.C.O.R.E International is the sanctioning body and you can get a look at their classes here: http://score-international.com/2014-class-levels-and-vehicle-numbers/ S.N.O.R.E, (the Southern Nevada Offroad Racing Enthusiasts) has almost identical classes with a picture of each one here: http://score-international.com/2014-class-levels-and-vehicle-numbers/

Very nice! The proportions are right on. Love the tire combo!

Thanks for the kind words (and bumping this thread back up)! I've always like how this MOC turned out but I'd do a few things differently if I were to build it again, especially now that I know brick link exists! My next MOC is another vintage racer and I've been to the parts well far too many times to get the required pcs... Good luck with your MOC! There is a lot of fun to be had researching those old racing machines. Their construction echoes LEGO pcs on so many ways. Also, your buddy's dragster is awesome, don't change a thing!

Fantastic!

Thanks for the kind words! Yes, there are two 2-cylinder engines chained together.

Very nice indeed!

I use this company all the time for work: www.protomold.com Upload your solid model and it will return a tooling price, part price, and mold analysis. This will be an expensive tool, multiple slide outs cost a lot to engineer and that flange on the back might need to be tweaked. Still it is a way to get tooled parts to the masses....

After building Tommy Ivo's twin-engine dragster from the sixties I wondered if anyone had done a similar thing with motorcycles. It turns out many racers built multi-engine beasts to tackle the dragstrips and the salt flats in the fifties. Here's Bud Hare's "Dubble Trubble" from 1953: And this is John Melniczuk's "Parasite" from 1959: So I imagined some kid in the fifties took my original bobber-style motorcycle from last year and doubled-it-up: You can see how the bikes were mostly built around stock frames, lengthened in the backbone and bottom and stripped of everything but the bare essentials, thus the bobber turned to this: Lengthened frame, shortened tank, lowered forks, relocated controls... Like the bikes that inspired this build, the engines are connected by the primary drive and individually carbureted. From the other side, showing the shift linkage. I first built the bike with a red frame but it looked to "show bike" instead of "go bike"! My son got into the act while I was building this and made a little pit bike to go along: More pics of both the red and black versions on my brickself gallery: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=erix ok, erix