I was playing around with some recently-purchased Polybags, and a weird thought crossed my mind: what if we make them steerable?

Front by Airworks, on Flickr

The idea of making a 5-wide, steerable car sounded crazy.
I played around with using the 1x2 plates with axle and 1x3 plates with round ends, but this approach, as many other variants, encountered problems with parts hitting each other when moving and the system falling apart.

A search across this forum was fruitful, and I found some neat ideas. I saw pneumatic Ts being used, and solved a problem that allows to use them in a rack-like mechanism - the Ts must be mounted to a clip with low friction, and the steering arm must be a high-friction part.

The old clip part 4085 had just the right amount of friction, lower than the 1x2x0.5 liftfarm things. I don't remember which variant of the part it was, but I feel like it was 4085b. The newest variant (I believe it was d) does not work!

Bottom by Airworks, on Flickr

The 1x2 beam pushes one steering arm to turn it, while the other is being pulled by a piece of wire (like a paperclip), or a string, as a more purist and neat option. The HOG on the roof is connected via two 12 teeth gears. 

Back by Airworks, on Flickr

IMG_20240912_091630 by Airworks, on Flickr

The most challenging part, probably, was making it all come together. Some connections are fiddly, the side walls are what holds the build together and there is not much potential for detailing them. The front and rear parts present some shape constraints too. Nowhere near the original polybag size due to complexity and height. But in the end, it works!
 

I will publish the studio file. I hope this thing can become a template for these tiny-turbo-but-slightly-bigger things.

Edited September 13, 2024Sep 13 by Airworks

Wow! Although I am usually more impressed by larger creations, this is almost as impressive! I can't believe you made this work. BTW, is there wire on the bottom of the steering arms holding them together?

Wow, impressive!

On 9/14/2024 at 1:23 AM, bruh said:

 BTW, is there wire on the bottom of the steering arms holding them together?

Thanks! Yes, it`s the wire. Can be replaced by a string, as with the wire bent sharply there is a lot of friction

OK. Cool! Are you going to do more of these tiny cars?

This is soo Technic - using a totally bare minimum of Technic parts - I love it!

Thank you very much for sharing!

Best,
Thorsten

What's the Item No. of the wire? Is it already registered at Bricklink or do we have to update the Bricklink files?

On 9/17/2024 at 7:46 PM, bruh said:

 Are you going to do more of these tiny cars?

Thanks! Yes, that`s the intent

On 9/18/2024 at 11:19 AM, Timewhatistime said:

What's the Item No. of the wire? Is it already registered at Bricklink or do we have to update the Bricklink files?

Thats just some random 1 mm wire. better use something thinner or a string.

1 hour ago, Airworks said:

 

1 hour ago, Airworks said:

Thats just some random 1 mm wire. better use something thinner or a string.

The challenge to build Lego models is building them with Lego parts. The whole point is that the collection of existing parts is restricted (to about 80.000 official parts).

Allowing wire, strings etc. makes the whole challenge senseless.

1 hour ago, Airworks said:

Thats just some random 1 mm wire. better use something thinner or a string.

The challenge in building Lego models is to build them with Lego parts. The whole point is that the collection of existing parts is restricted (to more than 80.000 official parts).

Allowing wire, strings etc. makes the whole challenge senseless.

1 hour ago, Timewhatistime said:

The challenge in building Lego models is to build them with Lego parts. The whole point is that the collection of existing parts is restricted (to more than 80.000 official parts).

Allowing wire, strings etc. makes the whole challenge senseless.

You do know that Lego themselfs use strings and used to have customers cut pneumatic hoses ?

Anyways, great idea on such a small space :)

Edited September 28, 2024Sep 28 by Ryokeen

The strings in Lego sets are official parts qua being included in these sets; same holds for the hoses.

If I take my shoelace or some random wire from my vacuum cleaner to solve the mechanical problems in a MOC, this means leaving the Lego realm.

It could just as well be a white elastic, round the blue piece then through both axle holes.  Not really needing to be wire.

https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-196867/Airworks/5-wide-steerable-car/
I have uploaded the instructions for this build.