In this video we are going to review this custom LEGO UCS DeLorean Time Machine from the Back to the Future Movies. This was put together from David Slater’s instructions under license from Brickvault, and sourcing the pieces from our own collection and Bricklink.
We will go over the features of this LEGO DeLorean, give a size comparison with other common LEGO cars available, look at the pieces to make the model and identify the expensive ones. We will review the model in terms of Displayability, Playability, Value and Build Experience. We will make some suggestions on how the DeLorean could be improved and answer the question, Is It Worth Building and alternatives available.
After this we will take a detailed look at some of the specific features of the LEGO car before finishing off with a time lapse speed build with commentary. So strap yourself in as where we are going, we don’t need roads ….
Further information on the Holiday Homes / Airbnb / Short Term Lets can be found at http://www.macatsim.com/
Both flats, Broadstairs and Margate are about 75-90 minutes east of London UK. Margate has a LEGO themed Holiday Lets / Airbnb Short Term Stay awith a LEGO Wall. Broadstairs has an iconic red London bus bunk bed (at time of recording).
Time codes to the Video:
0:00 Introduction
1:04 Overview & Features
3:04 Size Comparison with other LEGO Cars
4:17 Expensive Parts, Piece Management & Bricklink
6:18 Displayability
7:18 Playability
10:08 Value
11:36 Build Experience
12:11 Suggestions & Recommendations
12:42 Is It Worth It?!
14:06 Close Up Features & Detail
17:32 Time-lapse Speed Build
20:00 Summing Up
Transcript from the Show (Partial)
’day Everyone, Matt Elder of Family Bricks here. In this video we are going to review this custom LEGO UCS DeLorean Time Machine from the Back to the Future Movies. This was put together from David Slater’s instructions under license from Brickvault, and sourcing the pieces from our own collection and Bricklink.
We will go over the features of this LEGO DeLorean, give a size comparison with other common LEGO cars available, look at the pieces to make the model and identify the expensive ones. We will review the model in terms of Displayability, Playability, Value and Build Experience. We will make some suggestions on how the DeLorean could be improved and answer the question, Is It Worth Building and alternatives available.
After this we will take a detailed look at some of the specific features of the LEGO car before finishing off with a time lapse speed build with commentary. So strap yourself in as where we are going, we don’t need roads ….
This video is bought to you bay Macatsim Holiday Homes in Margate and Broadstairs. Great for a week’s holiday or a weekend escape, being just over an hour east of London, UK. Treat yourself to amazing sunsets, a LEGO wall or great food. Visit www.macatsim.com and mention this Youtube video, we’ll will look after you.
Overview & Features
So here we have the DeLorean and we’ll just run through some of the features. You’ve of course got the classic, iconic gullwing doors that open. You’ve got that there and you can look inside and see all the different bits in pieces in terms of the time circuits in there. Coming around the back you have the Mr Fusion, some details and profiling there and the other main thing that opens is the front bonnet.
Its nice and wedged in there, so I can pop that up there. And you can see the space in there would be for your spare tire. Of course, being a car it has what you’d expect in terms of your forward and back motion but it doesn’t actually have any sort of steering and the reason for that is the wheels themselves will enable you to flip out into flying mode that you saw at the end of back to the future 1 and then a lot of the second film Back to the Future Part 2. That’s got a really cool mechanism.
Just enable you to flip the wheels over pretty quickly like that and you know your ‘swoooshablitiy’. Looks really good.
Here I’ve just got it mounted up on a few transparent clear pieces that weren’t part of the part list. Just to go through and see it from all sorts of angles and looks pretty cool.
And we’ll quickly check out the inside to see the detailing inside which has been done really, really well. So you can sort of see the steering wheel and all the bits and pieces there. Then the center console and the chairs. Nice little buildable ones there. And the flux capacitor and things in there as well. Later on I’ll show you as it was being built cause its clearer as to how you can see things and get access to.
And if we quickly spin around to the other side and have a little look at what’s on the inside there. Bit better look at the time circuits. And you’ve got your Mr. Fusion sort of up there, done quite well. And some other detailing on the side of the car.
Size Comparison with other LEGO Cars
Here I just wanted to go through and give a comparison with some other LEGO cars that are currently available so you can get a bit of a sense of how big it is. Here we have the DeLorean compared with the Tesla which is actually a re-MOC version of the Mustang, which would be roughly the same sort of size cause it is just using the same bits and pieces. Click around the video to see a review and break down on that. So length wise they are about the same there, and then width wise, a little bit wider.
Comparing it with Dom’s charger from the Fast and the Furious movies, the Charger is a little bit longer, but then width wise, the charge is probably about the same sort of width. With these two however, you can really notice the weight disparity. Cause this is about 800-900 grams whereas this one here is almost a kilogram and a half. It feels like it is much more heavy than what it is. And that is the thing with this, it has been built really solidly, the weight is really there and you can really feel that there is 2000 odd pieces there.
Comparing it with the 1989 Batmobile however, it does feel a little bit small. The Batmobile is almost twice as long as what the DeLorean is. And then if you are looking at the widest parts there, the Batmobile is almost 1.5 times as wide at the widest point the fins.
Expensive Parts, Piece Management & Bricklink
We’ll go through and have a look at the parts I got from some 20-odd different Bricklink orders, and the rarer pieces and some of the more expensive ones. So here are all the parts to build this DeLorean, there are about 2000 pieces here of which I already had 1500 in my collection and then needed to Bricklink the last 500 which is really interesting.
Cause of the 1500 that I had, that was about £100 worth ($140USD) and of the last 500 pieces, that was about £250 or $350 US dollars. There are probably a few extra pieces in here as when I’m doing Bricklink, I try to order over what I actually need for some stuff cause there is nothing worse than if you want 10 of something and then the seller turns around and they only have 9 or something like that then you have to try to find the rest from somewhere else.
I always find it interesting how some Bricklink sellers send stuff. So this one here looks like somehow they have managed to vacuum seal all the pieces into their own individual slots.
So these are the most expensive pieces which you need to get for the set. So in these 20 pieces there is about £100 or $130 or $140 US dollars. So just quickly running through them. These blue shoulder mounts are about a £1 each. Each on of these little green unicorn horns are about a pound, these flat silver about a pound, these corner pieces here are about £2 each, they are about £3 each, each one of these little hooks, about £5. Each of these rims are about £5 each as well. These are second hand used prices.
But one of the most expensive pieces is this right here. It’s about £40 or $50 US dollars. This is going to be used for the windshield and it came in 1 set (3 in 1 creator 31070). I did look at trying to get the set itself off eBay or something like that, but unfortunately, I could never get it for less than £40. I could get it for about £40 / £45. That little hammer pieces is also a couple of pounds or a couple of dollars.
Normally these blue axle friction pins are about 1pence or 1 cent each. Whereas to do it in black is about a dollar or a pound each. And you need a couple of those. So hopefully they are going to be in a place that if you saw it or saw through it, the blue would be icky. Otherwise you are going to be paying that extra pound for a piece you aren’t going to see and doesn’t make a difference. We’ll soon find out.
Displayability
In terms of displayability, this model is fantastic for that as you can have it like this hovering mode here, or flipping the wheels back up, you can have it the other way. Really done a great job in capturing the lines and getting all the angles right. You know the iconic front part there and getting the sloping pieces here, the gullwing doors work, the sloping windscreen as it goes through there, and all the side detailing and grabbling, which goes along and just into, you know, this back area here. The Mr. Fusion, just some really nice ways they have these vents or whatever they are in the story.
The rear lights and everything you know just looks fantastic. Even the internals, even the way they have all the bits and pieces there. It doesn’t have the glass there, it does have the small little window opening they have gone through and figured out. And just having it in the way they are getting the angles coming down the side of it. Its really been well thought out and really well designed.
Playability
In terms of playability, this thing is really, really solid and rigid so you can swoosh it around pretty easily and you’ve got obviously the opening doors. And if we come through you can just, rolled it through. Its going to be easy enough to create scenarios and have a bit of fun with it.
The main thing you are going to be limited to is the front wheels, they don’t actually steer, they don’t have a full on steering mechanism, cause obviously the wheels will roll over when you convert it to hovering mode. Sure there is probably some genius bright spark out there that could figure out away to get it so it could do both, but I would imagine that is going to get pretty complicated. And you don’t have a great deal of space to achieve that with the angles sloping down. There is a couple of pieces in the way they hook together which is going to prove really challenging for that.
Which probably means you aren’t going to motorize it. You probably could cause in the back there, once you take this top section off, there is a bit of space there you could reconfigure. If you’ve only got it going forwards and backwards and not really able to turn, it might not be worthwhile doing that.
As rigid as what the main body is, you’ve still got a lot of these cables, ridges and piping tubes which if you just touch them in the wrong way, particularly some here, they can really pop off quite easily so whether or not you’d want to be manipulating that or small fingers, might prove a little bit of a challenge.
Then the underside at the back here, I don’t know whether because of the old piece that I had here, if I just left it in by itself, it kept popping out with the slightest little bit of a nudge. So what I’ve gone through here is just added in this 1×1 clip with a 1×1 stud there just holding it in place and that’s been there for the better part of a week now.
Now its probably formed it up to the shape that it needs to be you can probably get away without having that clip but it is going to pop out pretty easily.
So with regards to playability, the gullwing doors do come up and stay open. What I found when I first built this however, 1 of them kept falling down and then when I saw other people doing reviews on it, they had much the same issue. And what I found as a solution to it is you have one of these 1×3 cross technic pins which slide in there and into the back in there goes a little hook piece. Now what happens is the friction of that hook holds the door open.
And what I’ve found is that if this is slightly malformed in here, then the doors will start drooping and falling start down. So what I’ve found you need to do is when you have this here, make sure that when it goes in there, you need to make sure this is absolutely perfect. If it is not, then it will fall down. The other thing too, is when it is falling down if you can’t get that fixed, if you just push one of these chairs in slightly, what happens is that it creates a little bit of a blockage so you can get at least get the doors to stay open that way.
If you don’t have enough of these or struggle, or once you build it you couldn’t be bothered to address that issue.
Value
Value is an interesting one to have a bit of an assessment about. While it looks great and they managed to get all the lines and everything, to be able to achieve that, it comes at a cost. On the brickvault page where I got these instructions from, it suggested that the Bricklink price might be $350-450 US dollars. By the time I do the conversion, it is definitely over the higher end for what I paid for this , it is getting closer to $500 US dollars.
So it really is going to be something that is going to be hard to justify unless you are really into your DeLoreans. Don’t get me wrong though, it is a really solid build and it is quite weighty as well. But to achieve that has come at a fair bit of a cost.
So you could have optimized a few more of the piece usages. Those black cross pieces, they are actually hidden in behind there. So for them to be black, you don’t really need for them to be black. You could get away with them being blue and there is 2 pounds or a couple of dollars you could have saved there.
I’m not really sure he could have optimized it to any significant extent. Certainly on the underside, some of these plates and things you could have been able to do in light bluish greys or whatever the ones you have lying around. You can sort of see it starts to become a bit challenging in making them variable. If you are just making the whole thing looking as solid as possible from any sort of angle.
Particularly if you are going to be having it converted to hover mode and it is up like that and the underside is a mixture of black and grey and whatever other plates you have available, that might limit what you are doing with it.
Build Experience
The build experience on this was also pretty good. The instructions were quite clear. Each side, because it is mirrored, you do have to build each side slightly differently. Like the way that you build this part of the door is different from the other side. You are very rarely getting that sort of things, here do this twice or do this four times or whatever like that.
The instructions were pretty clear for the most part so it makes it quite good. There are just over 600 steps around 300 pages of instructions so quite well done. So it will take you 10, 12, 14 hours depending upon how you are going with it and obviously sorting parts that sort of thing to begin with.
Summing Up
#If you’ve enjoyed and / or gotten something out of this video, then hit that thumbs up button and/or consider subscribing. Is this a set you’ve built and do you think you’d be interested in building this? Sound off in the comments below. Or just leave the word “Biff” and we’ll know you watched the whole video.
What LEGO movie car is best? Check out this video here. Otherwise here is a review of that LEGO Mustang to Tesla Cybertruck mentioned earlier. Or alternatively, here is that Mustang to LEGO Porsche. However, this may be more of interest to you.
Thanks for watching and that’s it from us here a Family Bricks. Until next time when we talk about all things LEGO and lifestyle.
