The old Lego Technic sets have a look all of their own. Thin beams, primary colours, exposed mechanisms, studs everywhere and just enough functions to make them fun.

I had the 8844 helicopter as a kid, so I wanted to see if I could recreate it using modern studless Technic while retaining the look, feel and functions of the original.

TL;DR

After multiple iterations it turned out even better than I dreamed!

The goal

Meet the original 8844 Lego Technic helicopter...

With my studless recreation, my goal was:

• Make it from new modern studless parts
• Keep the same look and feel
• Retain the play features
  • retractable landing gear
  • spinning rotors

Seems simple, but given that the original model is from 1981, it took quite a number of versions to make something that met the goals.

The changes

The biggest changes I had to make were below:

• Switch the helicopter blade construction from plates to 50+ sections of part number 89679
• Switch out the chain for a series of gears in the landing gear retracting mechanism
• Complete rethink of how to make the blades spin, in that I based it on modern Lego helicopter designs.

The rotor blades just had to be changed as one of the key parts stopped production in 2004, and none of the modern helicopter blades where the right size or colour. So, I constructed the rotors with 50+ pieces of part 89679 as it has the profile of a rotor blade. The end product is slightly larger than the original, but I think it turned out great!

The landing gear mechanism was the hardest part to fix. You can still get the chain in modern lego, but I wanted to change it as using chains like the original does is not very common in modern Lego. First I actually tried to make it work using a technic link, but it never quite worked and it didn't look right. In the end I settled on using gears, but even that took a number of iterations to get working well.

I wanted to clean up the whole mechanism that spins both rotor blades. The original goes down the side of the helicopter and it uses a rubber band to drive the tail rotor. I wanted to clean it all up. So I copied and modified the tail section from the 42092 Rescue Helicopter. For the the handle to spin the rotors, I rerouted the handle to the underside of the helicopter.

Side by side

Parked next to the original, I think it came out pretty close. The overall look and feel is retained along with the play features.

Finished build

Below are a few shots of the finished studless version.

Build it yourself

If you want to build your own you can grab the BrickLink Studio model below.

Studio model download

Super fun project and the model also turned out great!