In honor of the LEGO Atlantis: The Movie, coming on in a few minutes, it’s actually on now, I’m posting a MOC I made out of two 8057 Atlantis Wreck Raider sets. I’m calling it a Wreck Raider Quad, but really it was an Exercise in Frustration. The goal was to see what you could do with a couple of the cheaper sets in the LEGO Atlantis theme. The 8057 comes with just over 60 pieces.
I only used parts from two 8057 Wreck Raider sets ($10 a set), along with a 1×3 brick and some transparent pieces from other sets. It seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, I wished I had used an 8057 and the $15 8059 Seabed Scavenger.
One thing I want in the Atlantis line is a cargo platform/submersible, which is kind of what I got out of this. Right now the vehicle sets are about moving from point A to point B. They aren’t going to be hauling anything on these vehicles. I’m hoping that with the possible Atlantis Exploration HQ 8077, we see such a vehicle. These are supposed to be researchers after all, and so far they are unable to really haul anything, outside of mini-vehicles (see the 8075 Atlantis Neptune Carrier).
If I delved into my other sets and pieces and used about 15-20 extra pieces from other sets or spare parts (perhaps the 5866 Creator Rotor Rescue or one of the Power Miners sets), I could easily make a much better cargo platform/carrier using what I made as the foundation, and I plan on doing that in the future. I could easily get what I need on BrickLink, but I’m thinking in terms of what you might have easy access to. As I said in my review of the 8057, it’s a good value given the two minifigs (the Shark Warrior especially). I’m far from being a LEGO expert, not even close, but I think with around 100 parts, LEGO could crank something out like what I was aiming for. As I mentioned, the 8057 has around 65 pieces, and between the two of them plus the extra parts I used, minus the parts I didn’t use, my count was around 120-130. You could easily knock this down by 15-20 pieces if you used more appropriate pieces from other sets, rather than limiting it to the 8057 sets. I think the Wreck Raider + Seabed Scavenger would make for a more interesting vehicle.
I plan on revisiting this MOC in a few weeks, and cleaning it up with better/more appropriate parts. My biggest limitation was mounting the motors such that they could fully rotate without hitting anything, be it diver or seabed, and the lack of larger plates.
The lack of larger plates is really what did me in, and my “upgrade” of this MOC will have larger plates making for a true cargo vehicle/research platform. With larger plates, I could have achieved a cargo/passenger area of around 6×10 studs rather than the mish-mash 5×5 that I came up with. With a 6×10 area (or perhaps 8×10 if I extended the length of the vehicle), I could probably mount some kind of small crane somewhere on the platform, plus have a dedicated crew area and a dedicated cargo area. I could even make a movable mount for the grappling hook(s).
