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8/11/2020:
Dialogue setting: Maximum VerbosityWell imagine no more, because we’re going to build the #27 instead. (I don’t have the fenders I want for the 33. Booooo!)
So! Here are the sticker sets I acquired for the #27. This is from set McDR6US, the McDonald’s Racers Car 6 – EZ Rally, sold through Mickey D’s in 2009. Now there *is* a different 27, in lime and red, but that duplicates a color scheme on a different car. The wider variety of stickers on this #27, plus its LBG color, unique in the field, means this is an easy win. I got three sets on the cheap, ditched the actual cars, kept the stickers. These are paper stickers, so they are going to suuuuuck to apply. That, and the conversion to a shaping they weren’t designed for means, “just get three sets.”
On the left is the beginning of the car. DBG Chassis, black plate underneath, two wheels applied. The flat silver 1×1 round plates are going to be just barely visible from certain angles under the fenders, and that was a sneaky detail I kept on all the cars.
I have doublechecked my parts inventory, and I have all the LBG and blue choices I need.
Now I look at the sticker sheets to get an overall sense of the car. I see an LBG base with blue stripes and a touch of white. The 1×2 tile I use to determine which parts will accept which stickers. This is going to come in crucially as I design the car.
Tomorrow, I’ll take pics from LDD and fit the obvious pieces onto this base as well.
8/12/2020:
Today I added the rest of the base. 1×2 LBG door rails peek out from under 2×4 LBG plates, connecting the runner boards to the chassis.
2×3 LBG wedge plates and a 1×6 LBG plate make up the front splitter, and I mirror this on the back. This is shaping, so the 2×3 wedge plates can be replaced by a 2×6 plate with curved corners, a couple of 2×2 wedge plates with a 2×2 in the middle, or other options.
The wheel fenders go on, and they’re blue to match the curved areas on the Rally Pro stickers. I’m already thinking about how much blue to balance with LBG and the touch of white that may come near the end.
Steering wheels come in the core five colors, so picking blue is also easy. I’m committed to making the cockpit area blue inside the LBG base at this point.
Dialogue setting: Maximum Verbosity
Lols.
Steering wheels come in the core five colors, so picking blue is also easy. I’m committed to making the cockpit area blue inside the LBG base at this point.
Aww, it was perfectly symmetrical until you put that steering wheel in!!
See, I can handle #maximumverbosity as long as there are graphics to go with it… 😉
8/16/2020:
The parts I needed to complete #18 and #21 came in, along with a lot of minifig parts for different drivers and pit crews. Progress on drivers of #1, #7, #8, #9, #12, #13, #14, #18, #21, #33, #42, #46, and #96. Pit crews are now in progress for #1, #13, #14, #18, #21, #33, #46 and #96. This will give me flexibility to build a longer pit lane if I’m the guy organizing a big Grand Prix display.
Now that I have these new figs, I think I’ll want to refine the #18 and add medium blue to its blue and yellow to match the figs.
I still have some color blocking decisions to make, so no pictures right now.
Back to slowly building the #27 tomorrow so I can let those decisions percolate.
8/21/2020:
The #27 project is on hold as I scrounge around for LBG 1×4 tiles. I may just BL them, which will delay things unless someone has them easily accessible for trade. I will probably continue and build the front and rear of the car instead while I wait for the parts I need for the sides, to add stickers there. I’ll need a fifth 1×4 LBG tile for the spoiler.
NEED: 5 LBG 1×4 tile in order to place 5 1×4 LBG stickers.
After sorting the figs out, it looks like the #1 Octan race car personnel now has a driver, full pit crew, spotter, and an extra mechanic. The #13, #17 and #18 teams are really close, and are maybe one fig away each, but I need more black helmets and neon green visors for the #17. This will mean I can populate pit lane pretty thickly and depict the organized chaos of pit stops. I have 10 minifig track officials now too, and they are based on the World Racers design. I’ll rework the heads to have standard crash helmets and visors instead of what LEGO did.
NEED: 7 plain black minifig space helmets, 7 neon-green helmet visors
After taking a look, my minifigure head collection is pretty bland, so I need a bigger variance in fig heads. My only peeve is they have to have the white dots in the eyes. That started around 2004 or so, and the old, plain eyes look dead now by comparison. I need more brown heads too. A little diversity for realism purposes. Different expressions, genders, genotypes.
NEED: Variety in minifig heads, 2004 or later, preferably expressive.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, @arcadiumsol designed a new, mechanical landing gear for the Saito FS-19D Heavenly King fighter that he’s slowly converting and improving my designs with his own take and functionality. A very intriguing distraction, and reminder that I am a Space guy first. It’s really neat to watch your build evolve in someone else’s process.
It looked so good that I tried to reverse engineer it, which ended in embarrassment. I suck at Technic, and am relegated to copying others’ good design. That said, I am so glad that we have a variety of builders who are good at different things and can fill in the blanks without any builder having to reinvent the wheel.NEED: to get better at identifying Technic parts and mechanics. :/
8/24/2020:
Thanks for the support of my LEGO projects, guys. This is what this LUG should be for.
This weekend I did more thinking than building, trying to sort out which cars would be next in the queue based on the parts I have. I did start building the orange and DBG #43, the red-white-and-blue #77 with Captain Stunt, and I figured out how the spoiler should look for the #27, so I can continue posting the building process here.
I started designing the gas cans for the pit crews, which should be red. Unfortunately, this means Octan cannot be the official fuel of the Grand Prix, because Octan is red-white-green, and that striping of 2×2 round plate wouldn’t be visible on the red cans. So, I announce that Fuel 4 Speed is the official fuel of the Grand Prix, and its orange-white-black will go onto the gas cans of every pit crew.
I completed the #18 and #21 cars, but time ran out on me as drowsiness started to give me bad ideas. But at least I can take pics of those two cars now, and, if I cheat the minifig heads a little, I can take a picture of a proud pit crew and driver. Maybe with some tires and tools for a Testing Day for the #18. I think building a little diorama might be fun.
Nah. Focus on the #27. Ideas, ideas, ideas. They’re like shinies. Apparently my creative side has ferret brain. I’m surprised I’ve stuck with the Grand Prix build for this long.
9/3/2020:
I just went ahead and ordered the parts I needed, and that order from Cutthroat Bricks arrived yesterday. I think I’m going to advance the #27 car this weekend.
I got the LBG tile I needed, and some trans-neon green visors for those drivers who have lime as part of their car’s livery. Those two colors fit.
I also got the original sticker set for the #17 car, which has rare roof numbers similar to what I did on the #23. This also helps to align stickers a little better than those stickered parts I bought the first time. So I’ll be doing that this weekend too while i expand the rear of that car to accept a gas cap.
Motor Mike will drive the #96 car, which will now be sponsored by Top Head Transport. Since he has a printed torso, I can make a pit crew for this car too. The old #96 was a very plain yellopw car, so I can spiff this up with some added red and black now to bracket the yellow sponsor on the side. This is another case of car without a sponsor matching the color scheme of non-IP LEGO “sponsor” without a numbered car.
9/21/2020:
Easing my way back into this by extending the back of the #12 car to accept a gas cap. That used up the last of my black headlight bricks, so I will need more. A little work on the pace car, thinking about adding stickers to the #17’s roof, which I think you’ll like, @greg. I found and bought the original sticker sheet, so now I can realign the #17’s stickers to be a little better, even though I remain just average at applying stickers myself.
#27 is going to require some LDD design work, I now realize. I’ll probably need some specialty LBG parts for it as I continue.
9/23/2020:
My energy level has been very low lately, giving me just enough time to work, eat, sleep. So not much progress. I am looking at my minifig head collection and thinking about building a couple of drivers, getting them in the cars or standing them alongside and taking pictures there. Maaaaaybe I can put a full pit crew together. I don’t think I have any jacks though.
*sigh* It’s always something…
9/28/2020:
Based on a pending trade with @philmatt24, I should get LBG 2×4 curved slopes instead of the 2×3 that matches the sticker set for the #27 carand resume that build this week. The difference in part is okay, because I used a “short” sticker on the #9, and I’ll probably do it again on the #22 car, as all of these cars are inspired by McDonald’s racer sets that had custom molded parts where the stickers *almost* match much simpler System parts. This is why I don’t feel ashamed to cheat on these part and sticker combos.
It worked well on the #18 where most of the stickering is used on larger parts than they were meant for, which I’m almost ready to show, as the result of a quite happy accident.
As for building, I’ve started the bases for the #33 and #56, and I’m proud to say I have the original sticker sheet for the #56, very, very rare on BrickLink. Only 4 existed for sale when I stumbled upon one in a shop that offered the #17 stickers I was looking for.
YOINK.
@greg leveling up the “pix, or it didn’t happen” trolling… you love to see it!!!
Rich is the lone voice in the SteelCityLUG wilderness right now, but when I read these posts I feel like a blind person at a movie theatre.
lol @greg
10/5/2020:
I got intimidated by continuing any car, so I shifted to race teams and pit crews, sorting out and using up most of the minifig heads I have. I finished and placed some drivers into 15 cars, and I now have complete drivers and pit crews for the #1 Octan, #13 Sphere/G, and #18 Kyoto teams.
I want full pit crews with printed torsos for at least 4 teams so I can show the mad scramble of a pit stop. Gathering other pit crews is gravy. So far, the #4 Vita Rush, the #14 AirBorne Spoliers, #17 Hourz, #21 Octan, #23 SpinWear, #29 Octan-E, #33 AirBorne Spoilers, #46 X-Treme, #71 Octan, and #96 Top Head Transport teams are candidates for the “fourth” slot, and I can thus build a longer pit lane and start/finish line and swap around the teams we choose to display on pit road.
Teams without printed torsos will not appear on pit road, and are kind of the “also ran” teams. Unless a lesser sponsored team makes the top of the grid. Which happens sometimes.
With more than a dozen drivers in their cars, aside from refinements, I can now consider the R Power #2, YUBI #5, Dragon Dueler #6, Turbo Sprinter #7, M.E.G. #9, and Wa-Sport #12 cars complete as Version 1 builds. THESE I can take pictures of now without wincing at things being incomplete. And maybe get some advice on these “also ran” fire suits.
So, no progress, but, suddenly, progress.
I accept!12/30/2020:
Setting: MAXIMUM VERBOSITY. Otherwise known as a pleasant distraction of a read.
Mostly because this is like 30+ MOCs really, even before I start track design on these baseplates I’ve been buying into for years now as a dream build since I was a kid. This is a lot of thought.This weekend was a sudden burst of progress again after me spiraling away from everything for a couple of weeks.
* Restickered the #17 black-lime-yellow Hourz/NXT car to actually put a 17 on the roof, in a similar format to the #23 white-blue-black SpinWear car that @greg liked.
In restickering the #17, I realized that due to the variance in the original sets’ sizes, the numerals on the sticker sheets have also been varying sizes. I have to use what’s available. This also deviates the feel of this racing sport away from NASCAR standards, through Australian V8 Supercars, into near-future GT racing, just to break with realism and to allow myself more fun in design.
* Reshaped the #18 blue-yellow Kyoto/EnGyne car a little bit on the roof to make it smoother. This one now has a nearly complete 5 fig pit crew beyond the driver. I still like its happy accident “dotted line” paint job based on forced stickering on oversized parts that were not meant to carry them.
* Finished stickering the #21 Octan car in its white-black-red-green glory. I am starting to respect this four car Octan race team… and root against them on my imaginary race days. Octan will be the main sponsor on the #1, #21, #71 standard fuel and the #29 electric car entry. I imagine the #29 as a test of billboard corporate rebranding for the petrochemical energy giant Octan.
* Built a rare purple-yellow racecar in the #22. This one turns out to be a real boat of a car, and it has a cobbling of like six minor sponsors straight from the McDonald’s set’s stickering. This one is probably a fan favorite, back of the pack, underdog car.
* #23 now has a driver, and since he has an appropriate printed torso, this team is now eligible to appear on pit lane and in the paddock behind it… if I can get 5-6 more of these figs.
* Dropped another $100 order for parts for this supersized project, including a full pit crew of figs for the #29, more stickers for the #31 and #85, a lot of fig heads to vary the drivers and pit crews more, and assorted parts for varying chassis.
Yes, I will try to take some pictures of #17, #18, #21, and #22 tonight (if I remember) before I consider working on the #27 or #31 tonight. I have also created the bases and assigned parts for the construction of the #33, #37, #42, #43, #56, #77, #78, and #85 cars. It’s so much that I have a spreadsheet for the car field now. The end for racecar construction now feels possible.
It turned out that I also have extra chassis (like most NASCAR garages have), which I will be building as plain blue nonracing sports cars that I can use for the sportscar dealership modular I’m dreaming up, and I can actually have enough left over to trade or donate to you guys who have followed and supported my project just through casual interest.
That’s the update. Back to you, Larry.
1/2/2021:
Unscheduled 16 hour shift for New Year’s Day destroyed that plan, but…
Four More MOCs
Here are pics of the restickered #17 Hourz/NXT, #18 Kyoto/EnGyne/Turboload with its funky dotted line stickering, #21 Octan, and the #22 CTM Graphix/ANWO Race car, the only purple car in the field. Plus a closer look at sone of the sides.
Also, this 2×3 arrangement of baseplates is the smallest arrangement I can make for the front straight, divided into pit lane and winner’s circle and the Start-Finish line.
* Built a rare purple-yellow racecar in the #22. This one turns out to be a real boat of a car, and it has a cobbling of like six minor sponsors straight from the McDonald’s set’s stickering. This one is probably a fan favorite, back of the pack, underdog car.
It’s already my favorite…
9/28/2020:
Based on a pending trade with @ philmatt24Duuuude… the parts are still in an envelope in my room… DM me again to sort out a plan to get ’em to you! (I’m home working every day lately, if you wanna stop by…)
Thanks, @philmatt24. I’m running out of headlight bricks quickly.
1/3/2021:
* Nearly finished both the #31 in black-lime-red and the #33 in red-yellow-black.
The 31 needs another “31”, and I have that sticker sheet on order, and I am missing 2 1×3 curved slopes in yellow for the #33 if anybody has those.
I am leaving these cars aside to fiddle with the #27 and #37 to see how far I can get with the parts I have on hand.
I was shocked to see that this thread is already six pages long
… then I realized it only has 8 posts. 😀
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