42009 Mobile Crane MK II, 42008 Service Truck, and 42004 Mini Backhoe Loader Builds Started

We ordered the above three sets from Lego Online and received them last week.

Raymond, who is 7, started on the Service Truck by sorting the parts into some bins to make things a bit easier to find.

He has the one large and four or five small bins of parts sorted.

In his first run he managed to make it through most of the second book before hitting a bit of a roadblock with some parts that were not in the right spot.

This had happened a few times during that build run with the mistakes being relatively easy to fix with my help.

So, with my encouragement he decided to take what he had apart and start fresh.

He has made it to the same point today without a single mistake and in half the time. So, as you can imagine, he is quite proud of himself for getting through it cleanly as am I! :)

I'm providing some guidance to Jean-Luc our four year old who is building the Mini Backhoe Loader. For the most part he is putting things together with some struggles around getting the pins into beams and parts with the slotted hole.

It's neat to challenge him to look at the picture when he thinks and says he can't do it. He will almost always begin to figure out how the parts relate to each other though sometimes I may need to nudge him one way or the other. :)

It never ceases to amaze me just how captivated and completely focused the boys can be for hours at end when working on their builds.

The Mobile Crane MK II parts have been binned and and will be started when Jean-Luc has finished his Mini Backhoe Loader. I will pilot this one with some help from the kids.

All in all, this set of builds has been a really good time for us "boys". :D

Philip Elder
Elder Bricks
Any Questions e-mail us or feel free to leave a comment.

One Would Think . . .

That a six year old boy would get tired and move on to something else after a while when it comes to LEGO Technic sets.

However, when it comes to tearing his Technic models down and building them up again in their alternate form he does not seem to tire of the efforts involved.

Part of this may also be that once complete one of the first things he does is bring the model to his dad for his stamp of approval and praise. :)

He most certainly can see and sense that I am pretty impressed with his LEGO Technic skills.

• Concentration: He can sit at it for _hours_ on end.
• Instructions: He is learning to follow them to the letter.
• Attention to detail: One little thing missed can remain hidden until well into the model build.
• Accomplishment: He has a strong sense of victory when he has finished his build.

From what we have seen so far, this young guy is building a skill set that will carry him forward in life with a strong sense of commitment and direction.

And, he gets to play with the resulting toy.

Win-Win IMNSHO. :D

Philip Elder
Elder Bricks
Any Questions e-mail us or feel free to leave a comment.

Adventures in Driveline: An Industrial Strength Independent Rear Suspension

Or so we thought:

We were messing around with trying to get an independent rear suspension (IRS) setup going on the heavy duty steering knuckle and hub.

The angle on the shocks caused contact with the spring so we hit a snag on that.

Our weakest link turned out to be the axle pin connectors that we used to mount the lower control arm setup. Three of them were used to try and keep things together.

But, as soon as some torque came through the driveline the axle pin connectors on either one side or the other would break loose.

That is a Power Functions XL motor tied directly into the differential setup.

Well, back to the drawing board. :)

Philip Elder
Elder Bricks
Any Questions e-mail us or feel free to leave a comment.

Rescue Helicopter 8068 and a couple of MOCs

Raymond has been busy building up the 8068 Rescue Helicopter after tearing it apart and giving his older sister a chance to build it.

He's getting really good at following the instructions with his ability to pay attention to the little details getting better and better.

The above snip is from LEGO's site.

Given what I do with IT, one needs to pay very close attention to all of the details. One little thing that gets missed can turn around to bite one really hard later on.

And, for Raymond this lesson gets learned when something just does not line up so he comes and asks about what might be wrong.

We get to walk back through the instruction book to see what is not quite right and work our way through the repair process which may or may not include tearing the model apart to get to it.

LEGO Technic is an ideal subject for a young boy that is mechanically inclined whether home schooled or public schooled.

For the home schooled kids their interest in Technic can be an opportunity to teach about following instructions and paying attention to the little details.

This is a little MOC he put together from the various Technic kits that he has:

Him and his little brother love to swoop about the house with their space ships fighting aliens and other not so good characters! :)

His spaceship MOC beside a racing bike or dragster MOC:

Raymond put together the frame and had a pretty good idea of where he wanted to go with it a day or two ago. Together, we worked on setting up the front and rear wheels and getting things lined up.

The bike/dragster in the above snip was actually a tear down of what we created and a complete rebuild using his own ideas based on what we did together. That's pretty neat that he incorporated our mutual ideas to come up with his own creation.

One of the really neat things about LEGO Technic is that as the owner's collection grows so does their creativity.

The many types of pieces that are available to us free our mind's creative juices to explore all sorts of amazing creations that can be anything from a real world Peterbilt 379 truck to a space ship to carry the us out into the unknown.

Sheepo has one of the best Peterbilt Model 379 trucks we've seen to date.

The details in this truck are amazing. The Power Functions features are second to none.

There are so many amazing creations out there. Folks have their own sites dedicated to their Technic creations with many having a YouTube channel too!

This trek of ours into LEGO Technic has only just begun and what we are discovering is really kewl! :)

Philip Elder
Elder Bricks
Any Questions e-mail us or feel free to leave a comment.

How Not To Build A Front End

As we go through and learn about building LEGO Technic based vehicles we are bound to make mistakes along the way.

Our first experiment with a powered driveline:

The Power Functions M Motor was directly connected to the battery box and then chain driving the v12 and driveline.

And this is our first attempt at a remote control vehicle:

It utilizes the independent rear suspension we put together the other day.

We then custom built the front suspension with a lot of trial and error along the way.

Well, we are still in a state of error:

Note the control arm separated from the mounting pins.

Having a look at the rear setup we saw what we missed:

The axle used is a 4L instead of the red notched 2L we used up front and both upper and lower control arms are held in place with the red lift arms.

So, back to the drawing board. :)

Philip Elder
Elder Bricks
Any Questions e-mail us or feel free to leave a comment.

Adventures in Driveline – The Independent Rear Suspension

I'm a bit of a gearhead. The computer bug bit just as I was getting ready to apprentice towards my journeyman's ticket as a mechanic. I was || that close!

So, it was pretty neat when Raymond and I managed to put together the following independent rear driveline setup.

When needed we looked for guidance in the Super Car 8070 instruction set. LEGO has most if not all of their build instructions available for download here.

Now, since Raymond and I had already put in a full day one Sunday to build the Super Car from scratch to finish we had a good idea of what the finished product should look like.

Plus, we had the 8070 sitting here beside us as we walked through the various steps of putting the rear end together.

Note that if we were building an independent front suspension we would only have one link per side with the other two ball joints connected to a steering mechanism.

Independent Rear Suspension Versus Live Axle

Now, on the gearhead side of things the discussion between the two camps as far as live axle versus independent rear suspension (IRS) can be a lively one.

The edge for handling can probably be said to belong to the IRS. However the big drawback to IRS comes in the form of wheel-hop when running a straight line race like a 1/4 mile or an off-the-line jaunt.

A good side-by-side track video comparison between a 2011 BMW M3 and a 2011 Mustang GT can be found on Motor Trend's site. The M3 hosts an independent rear suspension while the Mustang has a Live Axle.

BTW, the Coyote is an _awesome_ engine! :)

Philip Elder
Elder Bricks
Any Questions e-mail us or feel free to leave a comment.

Adventures in Driveline – The 9398 Hub Assembly

We are in the process of acquiring a number of different parts for our intended MOCs.

The above is something we put together using new parts based on the 4x4 Rock Crawler's driveline setup (9398).

Note the incorrect pin that sticks out from the hub.

Um, we don't have a 4L axle with stop at the moment. It is somewhere between here and Germany. ;)

The U-Joint used in the above assembly is the older 4L version. According to Pawel "Sariel" Kmiec's comments in his book The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide (we have the electronic version for now) the newer version U-Joint is actually 3L but composed of stronger materials.

He mentions that the 3L version is actually a lot easier to use in LEGO Technic setups.

For now, we have constructed our first LEGO Technic axle and hub assembly and are happy with the results.

Philip Elder
Elder Bricks
Questions? E-mail Us

An Introduction

Hello and welcome to our blog.

We, that is the Elder family, are in the process of discovering just how creative we can get with LEGO Technic and at some point MINDSTORMS on the new EV3 platform.

Raymond started his discovery of what LEGO Technic can do about two years ago via the Lego Crazy Action Contraptions kit he received one Christmas.

Since then he has been given or purchased three additional LEGO Technic sets.

LEGO Technic has been one way to get a very active six year old boy to sit down, get focused, and run a project start to finish in one sitting. In some cases that sitting can be six to eight _hours_ in duration!

Over the last couple of years I have seen first hand how his interest in putting the sets together and tearing them apart again have been critical in his development on so many levels.

That drove me to purchase my first set about four months or so ago. The set was 8081 Extreme Cruiser.

Not long after that I picked up the 8070 Super Car set.

Raymond and I put that one together in about an eight hour sitting one Sunday afternoon.

Needless to say I now have the LEGO Technic bug big time. :)

Obviously, LEGO Technic, and at some point in the not too distant future MINDSTORMS, is not cheap.

So, to help support this new hobby of ours we have started Elder Bricks.

Some of the links on the site will point to Amazon via our Associates account. Other links may be to future MOC Instructions that we create and may sell or give away.

In the end it is our intent to share what we learn and to help fund some of our projects that will show up in these blog posts.

We hope it will be a win-win for all!

Philip Elder
Elder Bricks