One of the “perks” of being an AFOL – you get very little time to actually be an AFOL. I am blessed to have a full time job, three littles and a home full of responsibilities. So, LEGO comes last…
I’m a couple of weeks into building these two Batmobiles, but in AFOL years, that’s only about two or three hours.
As a long time collector and builder of LEGO, it’s been fun to see the ever creative ways the engineers have come up with to provide steering for a model. Nearly every Technic model of yesteryear (I’m thinking pre 2000) used a pretty standard rack and pinion steering system. But starting around the year 2000, LEGO changed their Technic construction from using those studded, holed beams to the current studless beams. And with that change we started to see a shift away from the rack and pinion to some very clever (and sometimes complicated) steering systems. The LEGO 76139 Batmobile is a lean into the latter – a elegant steering system that works well to not only pull the front of the wheel inward, but also to push the back of the wheel outward.
I have to wonder just how many prototypes and versions of the steering system the engineers proposed and worked through before they settled on this design.
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