VST – Beetle Commander Robot X-54

It was always my wish to see a beetle boxer engine, build into a vintage robot and when i found a bandai vw beetle in india some time ago, i finally had the perfect parts to build the robot i had in mind.

An Horikawa Super Space Explorer i had on my shelves for quite some time was the willing victim as he was really fed up with his movie in his chest 🙂 When the beetle arrived from india it had not much usable parts anymore because it was… like all the indian toys, totally destroyed by rust. The car was a nice project for my son who tends more and more to create things from scratch. The engine of the car however… was perfect and complete and i had to think now how to drive the pistons inside the engine.

The tin litho on which the engine was mounted, fitted perfectly inside the robots body as if it was made for it. I removed the movie mechanism from the robot which leaves me with enough room for the engine. The biggest problem was how to drive the engine and make the pistons and fan to work..Alps Television Spaceman uses  spring coils to drive mechanisms in different angles but they are always the reason these robots don’t work properly anymore so I had to think about another solution.

I put all the parts back in a box and forget about the project simply because I could not think of a good working solution that would also fit inside the robots body…
When i found the box with the parts weeks later again, i started again to think about this problem and then found the solution… simple as I expected it to be: I had to add and mount a second motor directly to the back of the tin to drive the engine and pistons.

Normally a robot like this will not work properly anymore because 2 motors ( and 3 lights that i needed inside ) is simply to much for 2 D-Cell Batteries but the robots mechanism had the solution for this problem. The robot has 2 actions originally: walking and driving the movie with light. This is done mechanical and i decided to try to use the “movie” mechanism to power the second motor for the boxer pistons and fan.

When the robot shifts into “second gear” ( read: movie function ) the main motor runs but is not doing anything anymore so it does not use any real power at that moment. This time I could use the negative grounding switch to power the second motor and bulbs for the Beetle Engine… ……   …. can you still follow me ! ? 🙂

Now the robot had its 2 functions again… walking with lighted engine room and when he stops, he shifts into “second gear ” and powers te beetle engine with pumping pistons, light in the engine and light in the head. Inside the robot is all original “engine” litho and original parts from the beetle and the robot. In action the robot walks forward with lighted engine room. than the robot stops and powers up his beetle boxer engine with light inside the engine and real robot boxer engine sound. also his kaleidoscope eyes light up behind the blue visor. When the beetle engine has done its job, it stops and the robot starts to walk again….. almost looks like a hybrid robot 🙂

The condition of this robot is excellent and only original parts were used to create this beetle commander robot X-54
It runs on 2 D-Cell batteries that fit normally into the robots battery compartment at the back.

The Robots ears were made after a design of Henk Gosses ( Aviator Robot ) I resized them and made them fit for the robots head.

Only one example was made, so it’s an absolute unique robot of which not a second one exists.

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