Wednesday 30 September 2015

How to make a LEGO Wheelchair Footballer

LEGO is great. You can make anything, right? Well actually, maybe you can. A friend of a friend has a son who uses a wheelchair, and he made it onto his local Wheelchair Football Team. As a surprise for him our friend enlisted our help to make a LEGO minifigure to celebrate his achievement.

How to make a LEGO Electric Wheelchair Footballer

You don't reinvent the wheel (or the wheelchair) if you don't have to, so to start us off we had a quick look around and there are lots of designs of wheelchairs that people have made using LEGO, and some of them are excellent, but we didn't see anything spot on for this young man's electric wheelchair.


My partner set to work and his initial design which was mainly to work out 'how it all came together' looked like this....version 1.

Prototype 1 LEGO Electric Wheelchair Footballer

Once the basic shape is sorted out, it's all about refinement...

Prototype 2 LEGO Electric Wheelchair Footballer

Now it really was starting to come together....and a bit of internet searching brought up photos of his team, so we could check out the kit...

LEGO Electric Wheelchair Child Footballer

It uses one 'illegal' technique (something that causes stress to a LEGO piece) to make the joystick on the armrest, and the rubber hose is strictly Technic and ours is a vintage part, but it's all LEGO, and his Mum made it all worthwhile by posting a thank you on Facebook...


So to the instructions......We actually created a booklet for our young friend, just in case his wheelchair footballer ever needed repairing. Each page shows the pieces required and how it goes on to the model - hopefully enough like real LEGO instructions that you have no problem following it!

These are the parts you will need.... (see bottom of the page for advice).

Components to make LEGO Electric Wheelchair Child Football

And the instructions....Emmet style....

Elements to build LEGO Electric Wheelchair Child Football

Build instructions LEGO Electric Wheelchair Child Football

Building instructions for LEGO Electric Wheelchair Child Football











A novice masterbuilder can easily play around and adapt the front to remove the protective bumper, or change the headrest or battery, or anything else so that your wheelchair can really be YOUR wheelchair.

We managed to find the pieces to make our wheelchair footballer, but we had to replace a couple of them because they were rarer and from sets. There are various places around the internet where you can buy LEGO elements individually, possibly the biggest and best known is BrickLink - an online market which is open to anyone to buy and sell their spare LEGO. It's where we've always bought our odd pieces of LEGO, and it's always been awesome.

Thanks to Brett for being lovely enough to think of the idea, and for asking us to join in....feelgood factor x 20.

18 comments:

  1. Wow this looks amazing. The amount of effort to get the details just right no wonder he was thrilled with it xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Awwww thanks Steph! My OH really has to have the credit :)

      Delete
  2. Jenny, this is brilliant!! You are amazing people to do this for someone - no wonder his Mum was delighted. x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Awwww - it has it's own reward though! It was a lovely to be able to help out :) x

      Delete
  3. Such a fab idea. This is so clever. He looks delighted with it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I believe he was delighted. It's really made us think about other children now and what they might require to make their own personal minifigure :D

      Delete
  4. This is Epic, a really lovely idea and a great make! Well done x

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is fantastic! My son is also in a wheelchair, and is an expert level Lego builder. I'm going to show him this and see if he would like to build himself one! I'll let you know how it turns out! Thank you so much for posting this and sharing the "plans" for the build!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! It's comments like this which make it all worthwhile. Thank you for taking the time to write and best of luck to your son with his build!

      Delete
  6. Epic build! My girls now have electric chairs for their Lego Friends and love to play games based on the disabled camp we help to run each summer. Thanks for posting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh wow, that's so awesome! Thank you so much for commenting, that's brilliant. It really is reading comments like this that makes my week - thank you so much. Happy building! :)

      Delete
  7. Thank you for sharing this design, I gave used it as the base to create one for a young man I work with (I was going to add a picture but can't work out how)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank YOU! I have actually seen your photos! It looks fantastic :D And it really is excellent to know that the design is being used - and making someone their own LEGO person just like them :)

      Delete

Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment. I read every one and try my best to reply!