Remote Controlled Plowing Truck

Name of Model: An IR controlled plowtruck with autovalves

Created by: Ultimario

Found at: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=464033

Details: Here's a new twist on the Technic snow plow idea: a heavy-duty truck with a large plow on the front of it. The system uses pneumatics (with auto-valves) and Power Functions to allow it to be remotely controlled. All four wheels are powered (plus steering in the front), and the plow is fully controllable. The suspension system is surprising - it's sort of a beefed-up version of the live axle concept that moves a chunk of the chassis down to simplify delivering power.

This is Friday's model of the day

Miniland-scale Maersk Truck

Name of Model: DAF XF105

Created by: Mad physicist

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/madphysicist/tags/xf105/

Details: It's hardly news now that Ralph "Mad physicist" has built something awesome. Some of us only build occasionally, or stick primarily to easy things, but he's one of those people who can churn out great, all-original creations on a regular basis. Here, he brings us several great mosaics a container truck with tons of details. The Maersk lettering and other mosaic-style work steals the show, but there are many more subtle tricks as well. Highlights include the wheel wells (which use multiple hinge bricks), cheese slopes facing different directions to get the curves at the front edges of the cab right, and the fractional stud offsets on the top of the cab.

Large, Realistic, Functional Truck

Name of Model: US Truck 2

Created by: 2LegoOrNot2Lego Ingmar Spijkhoven

Found at: MOCPages: http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/163114 Brickshelf: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=373679 YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoAqEgD5jQs

Details: This truck in the Model Team style has enough working features to put the sets in that theme to shame. Using Power Functions motors, this truck has proper steering, outriggers, and is powered strongly enough to function as a remote-control toy. In the video where the suspension system is demonstrated, it sounds like the gears strain a little bit - but the fact that this can handle it's own weight at all is enough of a feat even if it does strain a few parts. Then there's those looks - the bold red, white, blue, dark blue, and chrome silver looks fantastic. Coming in somewhere around miniland scale, this is one of the larger trucks I've seen, and no detail or feature had to be spared to make it work.

This is Saturday's model of the day

Pennybacker "360" Bridge

Name of Model: Pennybacker Bridge

Created by: TJ Avery

Found at: http://www.texbrick.com/model_pbridge/

Details: The Pennybacker "360" Bridge in Austin, Texas, was re-created in LEGO form for this year's SXSW festival (more coverage of that coming Sunday - we're highlighting this one model separately today). A few minor modifications were made to the original design to make it fit a minifig-scale town layout better - the roadway was flattened, train track was added, and the asymmetric parts of the bridge were made symmetrical. This actually features a complete Technic support frame - a few thousand Technic half-pins were used to attach the dark red plates on top of the structure. The link above has all the information you need on this model, including photos of the model's construction and of the life-size bridge in Austin that this is based on. Here are some basic stats (for those of you not yet convinced): Model Specs and Facts: Start date: 31-January-2010 Date of completion: 13-March-2010 Nearly 14,000 pieces used 35-40 pounds in weight (estimated) Total bridge length = 384 studs (aprox. 120 7/8 inches = 3.1 m) Free span length = 347 studs (approx. 109 1/4 inches = 2.8 m) Height (from bottom of abutments) = 37 3/8 inches = 0.95 m) Total width = 67 studs (approx. 21 1/16 inches = 0.53 m) Deck width = 48 studs (approx. 15 inches) Made of 100% LEGO pieces, and no glue was used Scale = approx. 1:64* * (could vary between 1:62 and 1:71 depending on reference taken)

Dutch Fire Engine

Name of Model: Dutch Fire Engine

Created by: Mad physicist

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/madphysicist/sets/72157622783863029/

Details: Ralph "Mad physicist" Savelsberg is still building fantastic miniland-scale vehicles. This time around, he expanded his set of Dutch Emergency Vehicles (I've linked to the full collection above) with a Fire Engine. A neat mix of studs-not-on-top (SNOT) trickery and mosaic-style siding, it ends up being immediately recognizable. Of course, that's not enough for a detail expert like Savelsberg - he's also made working doors, including rolling doors, so that every hatch on the vehicle operates realistically (and of course, every one actually contains miniature equipment for the miniland firemen to use). Don't miss the clever tricks used for the front wheel-well, which boths looks great and actually splits so that the tilt cab can be raised for maintenance. More details (and information you'd probably be interested in that I'd rather not blatantly cut-and-paste here) can be found in the gallery above - each photo's flickr page has more information about the model and/or the source material.

Complex Unimog

Name of Model: Feuerwehr Unimog

Created by: nolnet

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nolnet/tags/1300/

Details: At first glance, this looks like your standard armored truck. More specifically, it is a unimog and is built 6 studs wide with a 5-stud wide cab. Perhaps some of the details caught your eye as well. What you probably didn't catch, though, was just how precise the details were - check out this partially-built image for a variety of interesting techniques, including using tools with pins for exhaust, building the wheelbase upside-down to improve ground clearance, and using clips with 1x1 tiles to make custom mudguards. The texture on the sides of the truck are achieved in a surprisingly complicated way (sideways) as well.

This is Tuesday's model of the day

Sariel's Scania Dump Truck

Name of Model: Scania Dump Truck

Created by: Sariel

Found at: http://sariel.pl/2009/11/scania-dump-truck/

Details: Every once in a while, I find out about someone in the AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) online community that I should have been aware of sooner but somehow have managed to overlook. Today's featured builder, Sariel is one such person. Not only have several fantastic vehicles by Sariel (Paul Ian Kmiec) been shown to me before, but Sariel actually has been brought on as a guest blogger for the official LEGO Technic blog. It's no wonder why - his website is a treasure trove of spectacular vehicles and clever building ideas. Many of the models on there (such as the one pictured here) feature both functional Technic-style innards and a classy brick-built exterior. The mix of realistic looks and realistic mechanisms is refreshing and masterful.

This is Monday's model of the day

4-Wide Mobile Command Center

Name of Model: Micro Agents

Created by: nolnet

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nolnet/tags/microagents/

Details: There's an interesting phenomenon in recent LEGO's more recent kits - cars are getting bigger. 4-studs wide became fairly standard in the mid 1960's, and didn't really go anywhere all through the 1990's. Of course, minifigs are themselves nearly 4 studs wide, and real cars generally seat two people in the front - so these cars, while fun, were almost always incredibly out of scale. Minifig scale has always been considered a meaningless term by many serious LEGO fanatics, since the car scale has little to do with minifig size, train size, building size, etc - there are just too many different scales that the company has sold as made for minifigs over the years. This gets a bit painful for some of us long-time LEGO fans - we have 4-wide cars lining our roadplates, and now we're getting cars that are more accurately scaled (or even overscaled, which is the case for the set this model is based on), and suddenly it's clear that many of the cars we've been buying for years are the wrong scale. Naturally, we're finding clever ways to change the scales and sizes of things to make things more consistent. Which size to switch to is a topic of much debate, but the creator of today's model decided to take the awesome Agents Mission 6: Mobile Command Center kit (a 12-stud wide beast that contains a number of smaller vehicles and all sorts of goodies) and turn it into a 4-stud wide truck (with 6-wide trailer) closer in scale to the vehicles of my childhood. I don't know if I should call this microscale (it is a less than half-size version of a real set) or minifig scale (it matches the "minifig-scale" vehicles of my childhood), but it is darn awesome. Well, now that I look through more of the photos and see the interior of the trailer (awesome!) and the smaller versions of two other Agents sets, I'm thinking I'll call this microscale. Or, again, maybe just "awesome". I think we're at a new "awesome"'s per post record...

Western Truck

Created by: unknown

Found at: http://goldmine.mylivepage.com/image/483/6208/IMG_1010.jpg and some surrounding pages

Details: Those of you who remember the 90s may recall that in 1996, LEGO released a Wild West line. Some builders have taken it upon themselves to build new models in that now long-gone theme. Today's truck, which appears to be some sort of getaway vehicle, is one such model. The details on this are really something too. There are quite a few studs-not-on-top parts used to get things looking just right. That's about all I can say about this one even though there does appear to be more on this site (use the Ankstesnis and Sekantis buttons to flip through additional pictures) due to the language barrier.

This is Thursday's model of the day