Little Lego Creations

My sons and I spend some of our time doing what all geek dad's do with their male children—building little Lego creations. We've only got a couple thousand bricks, but we do have a decent "magic bag" of weird specialized parts, so sometimes we can make coolish things.

Nothing here is anywhere near as impressive as many of the Lego creations you'll find elsewhere on the web. But the things here are actually something you could build, without 80,000 bricks and a year off. And perhaps some small inspiration may come from them.

		Poor Man's Rubber-Band Trebuchet Some people out there have built much more impressive trebuchets, but we built this one in an hour. So yeah, a real trebuchet uses potential energy stored in heavy objects hoisted against the force of gravity, but since that's hard, and the world is blessed with rubber bands, we built ours that way. Here's a picture of the trebuchet after firing. There's a stop at the base that keeps the arm from moving any further forward. Here's a shot of the band mechanism. We also built a hair trigger, also shown in its set position.
		Articulated Suspension Vehicle This was an attempt at making an articulated-suspension vehicle that was also strong. Many of the lego hinge parts are too small to make a strong vehicle, so this used a roll-your-own hinge using antennas as hingepins. It was actually pretty strong. I used four-axle bases for the wheels, but in retrospect I should have built bases that put the wheels at the very edge. The ends of the wheel bases tended to get caught on rough terrain. Lesson learned.
		Steerable Vehicle Pardon the poor picture. This and this are even worse. Anyway, this is one of the many steerable vehicles we've made. It steers the rear wheels simultaneously via a linkage that goes through the middle part of the car. There are a lot of really fun things to do with those black and gray bearing pieces that are on the tops of the steerable parts.
		Another Steerable Vehicle This shows a vehicle we made with linked front-wheel steering that's controllable from a lever that protrudes from the top of the vehicle. Here's a side view, a top view and a view of the steering mechanism from below.
		Car Carrier Truck A simple car-carrier truck with a hinged elevated levels. Yeah yeah. Here's a closer view.
		Twin-Wheel Dragster This dragster was built while watching a bunch of top-fuel action on cable with my kids. They loved dramatic stuff like blower belts flying off, so I built an engine with a belt that you can actually turn. (Sorry for the green blower belt...I don't have a very good supply of rubber bands around here :-). Here's a detail of the engine. Yes, I know that no dragsters have twin front or rear wheels.