Christmas is coming and Motorbike Writer is playing Santa with the chance to win a Lego Harley-Davidson Fat Boy costing $A159.99.
To win, we asked readers to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter. If they were already one of our thousands of subscribers, they had to post on the Facebook article.
UPDATE: Our winner is Daniel Dienes of East Ipswich. Congratulations and Merry Christmas! 
Lego leanings
Our regular Gold Coast contributor Todd Parkes is a Lego fan and recently put together the Harley Fat Boy as well as a Lego BMW R 1200 GS.
“You may not have the skills and knowledge, money or time to build the real thing but Lego of recent times have released a number of licensed motorbike construction kits based on the real thing,” he says.
Todd has been spending quite a few hours lately at the workbench in his garage building the licensed Lego motorcycles.
Todd’s complete Lego bikes“They are quite large in scale being around a foot long fully built and in the region of 1000 pieces in the Harley case,” he says.
“It means several hours or even days to put together — Milwaukee could build one of the real things quicker but we get the enjoyment of being able to do it ourselves.”
He says the instruction booklets contain more than 150 pages of in-depth instructional steps.
“Lego has always specialised in easy-to-read and explicit instructions,” he says.
“The bonus of the licensed kits is that within the instructional manual are several feature articles of the company and the motorcycle it is based on making it quite the collector item.”
Anyone can do it
Half way there!Todd says anyone able to follow directions, sort shapes and colours and some Lego experience can manage it with “patience”.
“I needed some of that as there were a couple of times I missed a brick here or a subtle fit there and several pages and instructions later went oops and had to backtrack,” he says.
“Building the intricacies of the bike such as the primary drive gears, oil tank, a creatively constructed finned air cleaner and even the 43-piece chain assembly make this quite the satisfying build.”
Todd says another downside is the “chunkiness” that comes with building with bricks.
“Technology and design advances have been at work though and curves are becoming a stronger feature of a Lego creation kit, ensuring that the finished build is as realistic as possible,” he says.
“The brick building company has surged in popularity from its low a couple of decades ago.
“Part of that has been by catering for the older collector generation through licensed kits such as the Mustang, Porsche, even earth movers from the CAT range.
Mecanno gets into the act
Meccano has also joined the action with its licensed and generic motorcycle kits featuring the Ducati Monster 1200S and GP Desmo.
Christmas isn’t just for kids, Todd says.
“Next time the big kid in you wants to come out and play or your real steed is grounded, pull up a stool at your work bench, crack open the box and build a kit like this,” he says.