8081 SRT Tremor

Lego set 8081 is one of my favorites. It’s a cute little set, that has some mechanical diffenciencies, so I have made a number of MODs of the set. Here’s another one.

The full gallery may be found here.

It’s becoming a bit of a bad habit for me to start a new project while I am currently building something else. While I was building the 8081 110, I founds myself making another draft of a little pickup. I moved pretty quickly on the 8081 110, but this project stalled. The chassis came together quickly. The live axle rear suspension is a simple design with five links to keep non-vertical movement at bay. The front is a simple independent wishbone design just like the original 8081. Finally, I placed a V-8 right over the front suspension, and geared it to the rear wheels. I used the new differential in the rear axle, which drives the V-8 a little faster than in my previous designs.

The sport pickup is a silly I idea that was all the rage in the United States in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Pickups like the SVT Lightning, the Ram STR-10, and my personal favorite the Dodge Dakota RT, were prevalent. This MOC slowed while I was trying to get the styling in the vein of these notable pickups. I liked what I designed for the front and rear bumper, and the rear bed was sufficient. But all the designs I came up with for the hood and the front grill looked dull and basic. Each of the above pickups had bold grills, and a hood line that communicated more power than anyone would need.

At some point, I realized I was not making any changes to the design, and I was running out of creativity. So it was time to be done.

While this is not my favorite MOD of 8081, it is another one to add to my long lists of MODs. The MOD worked well in that each of the simple features functioned without any problems. But I do feel like I did not do justice to 8081 with this MOD, nor did I represent any of those sport pickups well with this MOD. Maybe I’ll need to build a replacement soon….

Happy building.