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Added March 28, 2012
A little mod of my 10220 VW T1 Camper van: A simple steering mechanism
Everytime I had to move my Camper Van on the shelf I missed the possibility of steering the front wheels. The model is quite big and heavy and so it wasn’t easy to “park” it. So I looked for a way to add a steering mechanism without touching the outer shape of the Camper.
I remembered a mechanism shown in a video on the LEGO Creator pages. So I looked for that video and started to build this mechanism into the front of the Camper with LDD. I had to order some of the parts so I had to wait some time before building it for real.
This is the result:
The possible steering angle on the front wheels is not very big, but it’s enough to move the model left and right on the shelf. I didn’t add a limitation in the mechanism, so now the wheels move until touching the inside of the wheel arches. That is not very elegant, but I didn’t want to limit the steering angle even more.
The mechanism is a combination of classic and studless Technic parts. That was the best way to build a compact mechanism and include it into the model without touching the outer shape.
This is how it looks like behind the front wheels
The center pieces of the mechanism are two 3×4 Technic beams in “T” shape. The rest is build around these two beams. The steering is very easy: You just push the model into the direction where you want to go with the model and wheels will follow. In the original video you can see how that works.
So this is a simple steering mechanism for my LEGO 10220 VW T1 Camper Van. I hope you like it! :-))
Bonus photo: The steering mechanism in LDD
