Lepin 15004 Not Lego Fire Brigade Set Review - Part One

The Lepin 15004 Fire Brigade is a knock-off of the Lego Fire Brigade modular building 10197. This will be my second modular building.  There's supposed to be 2313 pieces in this Lepin set. I didn't get the box that is displayed, just a lot of parts in over 40 plastic bags.  This set is about the same size as the Lepin 15002 Cafe Corner that I built and reviewed recently on http://its-not-lego.blogspot.com.

Day One.

There's enough bricks in this set to fill up this old Duplo tub.  The set comes with this multi-page instruction booklet.  As with the Cafe Corner, I will be building the Fire Brigade over the next few days.  I do about 10 steps at a time, and this takes me about 2 or 3 hours.

In the Cafe Corner build, I kept all of the parts in each of their respective bags (I counted 43 different bags).  It made the build a bit challenging when searching for the smaller pieces.  For the building of the Fire Brigade, I emptied the bags with smaller parts into little plastic fruit cocktail cups.

I skipped putting together the mini figures and the fire truck.  I will do those last.  The Fire Brigade comes with a base consisting of two 16 x 32 stud pieces.  I found that the big flat unstudded piece between the two yellow strips would not stay down, one end would always pop up.  I'm hoping that this will be resolved by the addition of more bricks onto the baseplates.  

So far, no missing parts after the first 10 steps.  The tiles have been installed onto the baseplates front and rear, and the outline of the fire house has been laid out.  There will be two main areas divided by the parking spot for the fire truck.  The giant white 3 indicates that this was the third set in the original Lego Modular series.

It leaves me wondering if I should have rotated the 2 baseplates by 90 degrees, so that the main middle piece was not on the joint line.  Another thing I might change is the side 4 connector bricks, from beige colour to black to conform with the building colour.   End of day one.

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Day Two.

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The lower walls are in place and the door and window frames are starting to take shape after step 20. The fire house facade with it's cappucino coloured tiles is starting to come along.  Installed accessories that have been installed include the tool rack with tools, storage box and garbage can.  A broom and shovel flank each side of the rear walls.

The base for the fireman's pole is done and a box with oxygen tanks is in place.  Last but not least is the changing area containing a bench and a rack of the three silver helmets and two fire extinguishers have been wall mounted.  The warpage from the base plates makes some of the tiles pop out and continues to annoy me, but thankfully no missing parts to report at the end of day two.

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Day Three.

The first floor of the fire house is about 80% complete as we finish step 30.  More progress on the front facade has been made.

More updates to the fire house include the rear entry door, and the bricks added to support the yet to be installed front roll-up door.

The Lepin stair case consists of two pieces, where I've read that the Lego stair case is one piece.

Last few pics for day three.   So far so good.  To be continued tomorrow.

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Day Four.

Today we finished building up to step 40.   Let's review the progress of the Lepin Fire Brigade so far. Front facade is almost complete, with doors and windows installed.  Light fixtures added.   Garage door panels have been joined together and inserted into the support rails (more on this later).

Inside view of front windows.

Back view.  The taller back window openings have yet to receive their windows.

That pesky centre plate just won't stay down.

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Ok, so there's this major flaw in the Fire Brigade set.  It's not the roll-up doors, but the overhead tracks that support them (the long white piece shown above).  The groove or channel in the brick is just too narrow to allow the pegs of the garage door panels to move freely.  In fact, they can't even move at all.

I tried to test fit the roll-up door panels into the groove, but they just wouldn't go in.  I didn't try to force it too much just in case I broke the pegs off.   Initially, I wasn't sure if the problem was the track itself or the door panel pegs.  If it was the pegs I was planning to simply sand each of them down.

I needed to confirm what the problem was. So, what to do?

I am lucky enough to have in my brick collection, the Kazi 8052 Fire Station.  In fact, I have two of them (I bought them for quite cheap if I remember correctly).

The roll-up garage doors on the Kazi fire station work quite well, so I decided to dis-assemble the garage door rails and see if they work with the Fire Brigade doors.  As it turned out, they were dark grey instead of white, but they worked perfectly with the Lepin door panels.   I then tried to use the Kazi door panels with the Lepin rails, but these would't go in either.  So definitely the problem was with the two overhead track pieces.

Here's a look at the roll-up garage door system with the two Kazi bricks in place.   It's just a bit tight going around the corner, but not too bad, I can move the doors up and down.

Well, that was the excitement for today's build.  The two offending pieces have been placed on the curb to be picked up as rubbish.   I'm not sure if the problem I encountered was an anomaly or not, but for my solution it was to substitute the two overhead track pieces.   I'm certainly curious to know if this is a common problem with all of the Lepin Fire Brigade sets.

Good news is that there are still no missing parts after step 40, day four.

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Part 2 of the Lepin 15004 Fire Brigade continued here.

Lepin 07018 Not Lego Kryponite Interception Set Review

You would think Lepin already has it's hands full with knocking off Lego Star Wars sets and modular buildings.  Well, that doesn't stop them from copying the Super Heroes theme.  Actually, for Lepin it's Super Herde, lol.   Anyways, this is a new 2016 Lego set, that Lepin has already cloned. It's a copy of the Lego 76045 DC Super Heroes Kryptonite Interception set.

The Lepin set faithfully reproduces the new Batmobile and Lexcorp's forklift.

Here's the Lexcorp forklift with it's 2 flick fire missiles.  The brick clutch is not very good, as the entire forklift canopy keeps coming off when you pick it up.

Apparently, the Lexcorp cronies don't like their picture being taken.  Especially when they are handling Kryptonite.

Well ok, ok, just one picture.  Now get outta here.

In this set, you get three minifigs, the two Lexcorp guys and Batman.

The Lexcorp figures have two faces, Here's their we-don't-care faces.

Batman also gets two faces, here's his smirking face.

And here's his I'm hangry face.

Ok, time to get into the new Batmobile.  The way the roof lifts up is very cool.

Just like in the Tumbler, Batman has to lay down in a reclined position.  He has to sacrifice his posture for the sake of aerodynamics, I guess.

Some shots of the batmobile, of course.

I really like the look of this latest Batmobile.  Thanks to Lepin for making this set a bit more affordable.

Brand: Lepin

Series: Super Herde

Model: 07018 Kryptonite Interception

Number of pieces: 306 pieces

Number of minifigs: 3

Copy of lego? yes, 76045 Kryptonite Interception

Lepin 15003 Not Lego Town Hall Set Review - Part Three

I'll admit it. I've been procrastinating.  I finished building the Lepin Town Hall last week, but just haven't gotten around to posting the pictures.  Today, I promise to wrap up this blog post.  It's the last of the three part review of the largest Lepin modular set (well, not counting the Ghostbuster's Firehouse or the upcoming Haunted House).  If you missed the first and second parts of this review, you can find part one here, and part two here.

Day Nine

Here's how the Lepin Town hall looks after nine days.  I'm currently at step 30 of the second storey.  If you include the 62 steps of the first floor, I've just completed 92 steps of the instruction manual.

The last ten steps have been pretty mundane, as all I've done is to build up the walls of the second storey and add a few doors and windows.  Pictured above is the new elevator door and buttons.

 The mayor gets some privacy with the addition of a door to his office.

Second storey windows look onto the open atrium.  Not sure why the designers didn't continue using fixed pane windows on the back wall.  The ones provided have opening panes but nobody is going to open and close them at this height.

Front windows and glass door for the small terrace installed.

The administrative assistant will have nice views from her desk.

The mayor also gets an arched opening in his office overlooking the atrium.

Back wall of the town hall.

There were another three more steps to finish building the town hall's second floor, so I completed the remainder of the build.

Here's a few more views of the completed second storey.

Day nine is a wrap, second storey complete.

Day Ten

The first ten steps of the third floor.

A very quick build today.  Just laid out the floor and foundation perimeter for the third storey.

Third storey placed on top of the second storey.

Day Eleven

The walls are going up on the third storey.  This floor is one giant board room.  Sparsely furnished with a grand table, a throne like seat and other chairs.  I don't understand why the elevator on this floor needs an up button, as there's no other floor above this one.  

Installed the rear facing windows using the same design as the second storey.

 Town Hall, rear view.  One hundred and fourteen steps of the instructions completed.

Day Twelve

 On day twelve, we finished the third storey of the Town Hall modular.

The front of the town hall.

Last look at the finished boardroom.  Looks like a super villain meeting has already been booked.

Almost there!

Day Thirteen

The roof.

Roof added to the top of the town hall.

Two skylights made from garage door panels.  These were very tricky to install properly.

Day Fourteen

So all that's left on day fourteen is to build the clock tower.

There's an extension ladder to be used for clock maintenance.

The clock tower attached to the roof.

Here's the steeple with bell inside.

Clock tower and steeple completes the roof of the Town Hall.

The completed Lepin Town Hall, rear view.

Front view of the Town Hall.

These were the leftover parts from the Town Hall build.  I was fortunate in not having any missing pieces.

Here's the Lepin Town Hall next to the Lepin Cafe Corner.

Final Assessment

Design wise, I really like the elevator and the roman columns.  I also liked the twin skylights, but found that there was still not enough light going into the building from the roof.  The Town Hall is adequately furnished, which is on par with the Lepin Fre Brigade.

The build quality of the Lepin Town Hall set was excellent.  No problems with any loose or ill-fitting pieces.  I found that there was hardly any residue on the bricks, which was more noticeable on the Cafe Corner and Fire Brigade.  No missing or damaged parts.  

I paid about $90 CAD, making it my most expensive Lepin modular purchase to-date.  If you don't have this set yet, go buy it now.  You won't be disappointed.