Quintuple-Sized LEGO Go-Kart

[Matt Denton] was inspired by [James Bruton]’s scaled up LEGO and decided to create his own giant LEGO project. He found a classic model that he wanted to scale up.  1985’s Technic Go-Kart (set #1972) contained 98 pieces and seemed manageable.

He wanted to create something his 8yo nephew [Ruben] could sit in, but had to rule out a fully kid-sized go-kart. It had also to be (at least somewhat) economical with regards to plastic and printing time. [Matt] settled on sizing the largest piece—the 2×8 plate—to fit diagonally on the 11”x11” bed of his Lulzbot Taz5.

It took 168 hours to print all 98 parts (some of them in a series of smaller pieces), 5 kilos total of filament at mostly 20% infill. The resulting car can be assembled and disassembled just like LEGO—no glue! The rack and pinion steering actually works and the Ninjaflex-tired wheels roll as one would expect. So, pretty much the same as the real model only five times bigger. The only non-LEGO components are threaded rods down the middle of his cross axles as well as the hose, just Neoprene hosing from a hardware store.

[Matt] is well-known to Hackaday readers, being one of the original BB-8 builders as well as co-creator of the Mantis walking robot. He’ll be on hand this weekend in Maker Faire Hannover to share this project, Mantis, and others.

16 thoughts on “Quintuple-Sized LEGO Go-Kart

    1. While it is true that nozzles don’t last forever, I doubt this took more than one. In my experience, I’ve had to change the nozzle on my printer once or twice a year, depending on what filaments I use.

  1. Oh my GLOB!!! If Lego doesn’t start making a bunch of stuff like this for kids to build when they go to the theme park, then they are dumb. I would love to build stuff out of giant lego kits. They have the money to do it and could make a kids fantasies come true.

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