Hi and welcome back to part three of the most epic Lego build I've ever done - The Land Rover Defender - 860 odd steps, 2500 odd pieces, and lots of hours of building.
If you haven't read them here are the previous posts about this.
Part 1 - Intro
Part 2 - Steps 1 to 86
I was very concerned when I started this that I didn't really have the technic skills to get this right, I knew it would be a challenge but I was convinced that I would enjoy it.
And I'm pleased to say all of that is true.
Yeah it's really complicated and yeah you have to have some sense of how a car works to understand what you are building - you could still build it without knowing that, I mean the instructions are reasonably clear, but you wouldn't have the context which is part of the fun of building.
I should mentioned that I was joined today in my building by my wife. Now she isn't helping me build, but rather sitting at the other end of the dining table and doing her own build - It's the Fiat 500. And you have a strong sense from about ten piece in what it is building, and that's because you are building what people see everyday. Technic is different it's the insides of the vehicle at this point, workable gear boxes, suspensions etc.
I always thought that maybe one day I would restore a classic car. Never mind that I know nothing about car maintenance, nor do I have the room to store an old car. Maybe this can be my equivalent of that journey.
And of course I'm still making mistakes - as you can see in the picture below I managed to put the bottom trailing arms for the suspension in upside down and had to trace my way back to put it right
But once I'd put it back the right way up and added a whole lot more pieces I had so back (or are they front) wheels and a steering rack
and with the shock absorbers connected (the red and light grey things in the shot above) we have suspension which has some resistance in it
and at the end of day 2 of building I'm starting to get a feel of where this is going. I have two separate pieces and I'm assuming that at some put they start to get put together
A relatively short building day today - maybe around a hour and half, basically an episode of West Wing Weekly and half an episode of another podcast called 'The Rewatchables' which are about movies which they deem 'rewatchable' this episode was Bridesmaids.
My wife goes back to work tomorrow (and actually in the office for the only about the 3 time in 9 months) so I might get a chance to catch up with my build, becuase at this stage we are going to have a Fiat way before the Land Rover is ready.