Recommended Technic Pieces for my son - help please ;)

[legomum22222]

Hi everyone, I was hoping for some recommendations on individual technic pieces to buy my son for Christmas.   He loves technic and spends most of his spare time building and refining various motors, gears, etc.  He has a mixed lot of technic bought on ebay including the lego landrover and the liebherr excavator.  He wants the new liebherr crane but it's waaay too expensive so I would like to buy him a box of some cool pieces he might not have.   His grandparents have already bought him the lego mars rover.

I was thinking:

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/large-angular-motor-88017  (seems to be the motor from the crane, would 2 be enough for fun building?)

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/color-distance-sensor-88007

Any recommendations from this community on individual pieces that they have found great to build with and/or might usefully compliment the above or his existing lego collection would be very gratefully received. 

Thanks in advance!

[Maaboo the Witch]

A good idea might be to get him some smaller sets from this year and last - 42139 in particular comes with some really interesting parts and loads of gears. What about pneumatics? There's 42144 and 42157. There's a lot out there so I'd look through what's available and go from there.

If you're looking for strictly individual parts, the LEGO Pick A Brick service offers those - just search by set number.

Edited November 27, 2023 by Maaboo the Witch

[gyenesvi]

It really all depends on what he likes to build. I think he's got enough motors as a start from the Liebherr Excavator. The large angular motor's form factor is mainly useful for tracked vehicles I would say.

The color distance sensor will probably be useless without a proper programming environment and Mindstorms / Spike hub.

If he likes RC cars, one thing he does not have is proper drivetrain components, such as planetary hubs and CV joints (this, this, this, this). He has the suspension parts from the Land Rover. Also, he does not have proper wheels. Maybe the ones from the Audi are great (tire, rim). But maybe he's more into construction machinery if he wants the crane.

But as said above, maybe it's better having a look at the available technic sets and buy a cheaper one than the crane..

[legomum22222]

Thank you both, really appreciate the suggestions!

[Gumalca]

You could also use rebrickable and run a build calculation with the two sets that you have: https://rebrickable.com/build/

For example, using this tool I've calculated, that if you have 42100 and 42110 like you say, then you only need 97 additional parts to build the 42042 Crawler Crane. But this does involve the older motor system, so you probably don't want to buy those, because they are not compatible with your current motors. Maybe your son would be able to change the build and use the motors he already has.

For the 42146 Liebherr Crawler Crane the calculation results reveal that you already own 2355 of the necessary 2883 parts, so you would have to buy 528 additional parts to build it. But since this involves a lot of new and special parts, this is probably not going to be much cheaper than to buy the set in this case. So probably look out for other sets.

Either way, I think buying a new complete set or the additional parts for a set are the best ways to go. Because he can always learn things from building by instructions, and still build his own ideas afterwards if he likes building from mixed parts.

Edited November 27, 2023 by Gumalca

[legomum22222]

Thank you!  He will love this calculation feature so thanks for sharing it!