In this Instructable I will show you how to make Anakin's Podracer from the Star Wars universe! A podracer is a futuristic racing craft travelling at speeds of up to 1000 km/h (620 mph). Anakin's racer is partly self-built when he was 9 years old. Although fragile, Anakin's podracer is the fastest as seen in the movie.

This model is about 40 cm long, 25 cm wide and 15 cm high. I finished this model a little before Sebulba's Podracer and it's a little smaller. It's not completely accurate to the original, but it's pretty hard because there are only a few yellow pieces. The model took me about 1 week to build and the video took 20 hours of shooting and editing.

The steps are like this:

Parts Needed
Building the cart
Building the Engines & Finishing up

Here you can see a video of the model, together with Sebulba's Podracer:

Step 1: Parts Needed

Buy K'NEX pieces at K'NEX User Group / K'NEX spares

Rods:

13x Black rod (16 mm)
32x Silver rod (32 mm)
8x Blue rod (52 mm)
23x Dark grey rod (86 mm)
18x Yellow rod (86 mm)
1x Green rod (128 mm)
2x Purple rod (190 mm)
1x Lilac rod (190 mm)

Connectors:

6x 8-way Black connector
12x 7-way Blue 3D connector
13x 4-way Silver 3D connector
3x 5-way Grey connector
6x 4-way Yellow (Green) connector
10x 3-way Dark Grey connector
2x 3-way Red connector
9x 2-way (V-shape) Grey connector
8x 2-way (long-shape) Brown connector

Clips/Other:

9x Clip with hole end dark gray (1-way connector)
43x Black clip with rod end
3x Silver clip with rod end
22x Clip with Ball end
7x Clip with Socket end
5x Clip blue
6x Interlocking Clip Tan/bronze
2x Clip with Splice end Orange
2x Blue Spacer (½ width)
2x Black Snap-on Cap
2x Grey Cone
4x Orange Clip Angled 3D

Seempie provided the std-file so you can 3D print this piece:
www.thingiverse.com/thing:1706565

Gears:

6x Gear small Dark Grey

Wheels:

2x Hub Motorcycle Grey (50 mm)
4x Hub Racing wheel (37 mm)

Micro K'NEX

12x Yellow rod (25 mm)
8x 3-way Yellow connector

Non-K'NEX:

6x Elastic band (10 mm / 1/4" diam)
1x A4 Size paper and a colour printer

Step 2: Building the Cart

In this step it is shown how to make the cart behind the engines of Anakin's podracer. You start with the back part, and add the front and the sides to it.

I started the model with this part, because of the Zebra-styled colour shift. The K'NEX colours are ideal: Silver and metallic blue. Though, the shape is pretty hard to make, and especially on this scale. The cart is a little shorter than the actual podracer. I think the purple flexi-rods serve great as connection between the cart and the engines.

You will build these engines in the next step.

Step 3: Building the Engines & Finishing Up

In this step, you'll start up with building the core of the engines, which are two wheel hubs enclosed by 8-way connectors. Then you add the rear engine part, and later some details. Then the triple front flaps are added for both engines. I used elastic bands to keep 3 yellow rods together. I only had 5 transparant elastic bands, so in my model, 1 rod is lying loose.

I liked developing these engines. I've been imagining many times how to make the 3 yellow front flaps and made several prototypes. It's hard to do this with K'NEX, because its usual angle is 45 or 90 degrees, not 60 or 120. I found a way to get the correct angle, but then it became really hard to attach the flaps to this. So in the end I made up a custom way.

Furthermore in this step you'll make the small display stand on which the podracer sits loosly. This is basicly because I ran out of clip with rod ends / y-clips. So if you build it and you think it falls over to easy: change the design!

Unfortunately, I didn't implement any moving part in this podracer. It's simply too small.

I hope you enjoyed reading through this 'ible and if you happen to make it, please share your creation in the comments and I'll reward you for it!

May the force be with you,

GWorks