dhc6twinotter

I don't fish, but I asked my dad about your issue. He's an avid fisherman who has probably 30+ rods and ties his own flies. Here are several things he says to check: -The spool may be on backwards. -The line may be fed on the spool wrong. -The reel may be on backwards. Reels are made for left and right hand use, and you may have a left hand reel setup for right hand use, or the other way around. Some reels are interchangeable and the reel can easily be flipped around, depending on the seat design. If that doesn't help, you might be able to take your rod to a Cabelas, Bass Pro, Gander Mountain, etc for some help. Most Wal-Marts have a counter back in their outdoor section too. Just some ideas there...

Congrats to Paul! The pro tag is definitely well deserved!

I just completed a roughly 25,000 mile journey around North America in my 2000 Toyota 4Runner. I love this vehicle, and having the rare manual transmission version makes it a bit funner. On the Alpine Loop in Colorado. Elevation is around 12,800ft: Somewhere on the Montana/Wyoming border east of Yellowstone National Park: In the Sierra Mountains, California: Abandoned mine along the Mojave Road, California: Driving around Oceano Dunes in California: Colorado side of Dinosaur National Monument: Fun times!

Interesting design. TMV 6x6 perhaps? Steering is a bit different, but the axle spread is similar. The company that builds those, Jerr-dan, also makes a twin steer version that is one of the largest tow trucks on the market. These models have a 3rd set of stabilizers in the rear. I thought about building one, but it looks too odd.

Awesome looking tow truck! Love that old-school look.

Both the scraper and boat look great! Very nice job building the hull of the boat. I like that.

I just received a new LEGO Education catalog today, and while thumbing through, I noticed this: https://www.legoeduc...uplo_w3_dec2012 It looks like there are some new gears, as well as a few axles in new colors. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like we have the following: -Yellow 40T gear -Blue 24T crown gear -Red 24T gear -6 or 8T gear (can't tell which--maybe both?) -Green axle -Blue axle -Larger pulley wheels The gears appear to have beveled edges, but I'm not sure they are beveled enough to mount two gears perpendicular to each other. The yellow 40T gears might be a good alternative to those of us who need yellow hubs on our machinery mocs. Anyways, thought I'd pass that along. EDIT: I'm looking at these gears again, and it looks like the teeth are spaced further apart than those on a Technic gear. These Duplo gears look like they have a larger diameter than the 24 and 40T Technic gears, and I'm curious to see how compatible they would be with the Technic gears. Also, I wonder if they are more than 1 stud wide. I dunno…what do you all think?

The iMovie on my iMac has slow-motion, but not sure if the iPad versions do. iMovie is a pretty good video editing software. Much, much better than Windows Movie Maker, and it is much more user friendly than Adobe Premier Elements (glitchy program, imho). I shot my last video with a DSLR, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Only downside to using an older DSLRs, like mine, is the lack of continuous autofocusing, but new DSLRs have continuous autofocusing. I also built a little rolling LEGO camera cradle to use for some of the shots. The video of my Case tractor was the first one I made, and I used a HD Sony Handycam. I drove the tractor around with one hand, and used the other hand to hold the camera. That was tricky, but it turned out ok.

I used to work at a Chevrolet dealership, and we had a new Corvette come in the shop straight off the car hauler. Turns out it had a defective torque tube and made a terrible grinding noise. The mechanic had to remove the front and rear suspension, the transaxle, and exhaust system to get the torque tube out. Anyways, he had parts strewn all over the shop floor, and I went over to check out what he was doing. I was surprised to learn the Corvette still had leaf springs. It's a neat setup. Sorry, off topic...

I was wrong about the Dodge and Chrysler mini-vans. I just double checked, and they switched to a coil sprung torsion beam rear suspension in 2008. I'm pretty sure the Sienna and Odyssey use coil sprung independent rear suspension.

I've never seen a Watts Link done with LEGO, but that's not to say it hasn't been done before. Also, I was doing a bit more reading in the wiki entry I posted, and apparently the Australian V8 Supercars use a Watts link in the rear, except they mount it backwards and mount the link ends to the axle housing and put the center point on the vehicle chassis. It's a clever system.

We'll I guess I'm really late to the party! Good to know that parts are much larger. I got all excited when I saw that yellow 40t gear. Oh well...

I've always wanted to go to Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland; but unfortunately, I've had no first-hand experience traveling within Europe. If you do make a trip, please post up a trip report. I'd like to someday take a couple months to travel around Europe, and I'd like to see what you did. It sounds like you are going to stay within Europe, but if you decide to go a bit further and visit the U.S., I can give you some suggestions, particularly in the western part of the U.S. I just wrapped up a year and a half long trip driving around the U.S., and I spent 6 months straight camping out. There are a lot of neat things to see here. Keep us posted. It'll be neat to see where you end up going.

I can see how that would work with LEGO parts. I'm not aware of any real vehicles with this setup, but I'm not an expert in suspension designs. Your suggestions seems very doable with LEGO parts. I agree with all that. Using the A-arm piece was a suggestion I made in an earlier post as well. I think we are on the same page here.

The only purpose of the panhard bar is to keep the axle centered beneath the vehicle. Without it, the axle would have too much side-to-side movement and would be very unstable. A properly built 3 or 4 link suspension uses the links to keep the axle from rolling. That is why the lower links usually connect somewhere under the axle housing, and the upper links connect somewhere above the housing. Many triangulated suspensions have the upper links mounted to the top of the pumpkin (part of the axle housing that holds the differential). A panhard bar is not needed with triangulated links because the triangulation keeps the axle centered. Panhard bars have more than 2 directions of movement at both ends, and most real vehicles just use bushings to compensate, but since we are talking LEGO here, ball joints will be needed at both ends. The closer the upper and lower links are, the more axle roll (axle wrap) will occur. The further apart they are, the less axle wrap will occur. This is what Andy was mentioning a few posts above. A properly designed 4 link does not need a panhard bar to keep the axle from wrapping, but just uses the panhard to keep the axle centered. The image below shows how the upper and lower links are mounted below and above the axle. Also, the upper links are triangulated, so no panhard bar is needed. Suspensions that use radius arms instead of a 4-link have very little axle roll. Each radius arm is mounted to the axle housing in two places, so there are a total of 4 axle mounts to the two radius arms. The entire axle and radius arms pivot around the point at which the radius arms connect to the vehicle frame. Most of the discussion so far has centered around panhard bars and link triangulation. There is another method used to keep the axle centered, and it's called a Watts link: http://en.wikipedia....t's_linkage The beauty of the Watts Link is that it eliminates much of the side-side axle movement that a panhard bar causes. Looks great! Nice job so far. I do have some suggestions though: -Make the driveshaft 2 studs longer. Replace the red 2L axle with a 4L axle. The middle part of the driveshaft should be as long as the links. -Add another direction of movement to both the upper and lower springs mounts. You will need both side-to-side and front/back movement in both the upper and lower spring mounts. Check out the Unimog suspension. It allows the springs to move in all directions. -You may want to add more distance between the upper and lower links. You may have some axle wrap in your current setup, especially if you add another degree of movement in the springs. This may take some experimentation though, and your current setup may be just fine in this regard. Otherwise, it looks good! I'm looking forward to how this project turns out!

Yeah, thankfully we've moved away from leaf springs, but there are still a fair amount of vehicles that have them. Most of the pick-up trucks still have leaf springs in the rear, with the only exceptions that I can think of being the Dodge Ram 1500 and Honda Ridgeline (if you consider that a pick-up). The Dodge Ram 1500 has a 4 link coil sprung live axle in the rear, and the Ridgeline has independent rear suspension. Plenty of vans still have leaf sprung rear suspension, including all the full-size vans, and I think the Dodge and Chrysler mini-vans still have leaf sprung rear ends. I was pretty happy Toyota went with a 4-link rear-end on my '90 and '00 Toyota 4Runners. So much better! The vehicle that really surprises me is the Chevy Corvette. It has been using leaf sprung suspension for years, and even the new C7 Corvette uses leaf sprung suspension front and rear. As far as I know, it's the only automobile sold in the U.S. that still uses a leaf sprung front suspension. Pretty amazing what they can do with that car. And then there are torsion bar suspensions….

If you are going to use a panhard bar, you will need ball joints at both ends of the panhard bar. As the axle moves up/down, the panhard mount on the axle will be moving in an arc relative to the other links (if that makes sense--basically the axle moves forward and backward a bit). The movement isn't much, but ball joints at both ends would be the proper way to build it, similar to the Unimog or Paul's Mustang in the above post. In some cases while off-roading real vehicles, the link geometry on the rear axle can give a rear steer effect when one side of the axle is stuffed or drooped. The picture above is a suspension with radius arms. There are no upper links. The two lower links each have two mounts on the axle housing. This seems to be a fairly popular setup on real SUVs with live axles on the front (80, 105, and newer 70 series Toyota Land Cruisers, and I believe the Nissan Patrol and older Range Rovers as well). I don't think I would go this route with LEGO though. There are some funny movements that go on with a suspension setup like this, and real cars seem to compensate fine with rubber bushings, but I'm not sure how you could do that with LEGO. Many cars with 4 link suspensions, like my Toyota 4Runner, have upper and lower links that are different lengths. My upper links are much shorter than the lowers. Real vehicles have bushings and slip joints in the dirveshaft to compensate for this. However, when building with LEGO, I think it would be easier to use equal length links on both the upper and bottoms. If you are using a 4 link with equal length links, the u-joints don't have to line up with the swivel points of the links, as long as the links and distance between the u-joints are the same length. Since you would be using a panhard bar also, I would recommend using a CV joint on one end of the driveshaft. This will compensate for any slight driveshaft extension caused by the axle housing moving side to side as the suspension compresses. Another option is to use triangulated links on either the top, bottom, or both sides of the axle. If you go with a triangulated link on at least the top or bottom, you will not need a panhard bar. As Lipko mentioned above, you could use a single link on top with just a hinge point at one end (like the LEGO a-arm piece). This will act like a triangulated link and keep the axle centered, but due to stresses on the hinge end, this will probably only be good for smaller scale mocs. You could also just angle some 6 or 9L links to form a triangle. I believe ZBLJ (sp?) has done some triangulated suspensions. Anyways, sorry for being long-winded here. Just my $.02.

Yeah, I agree with you all. I just don't see LEGO passing on the NA market, and as mentioned, the models were at the NY Toy Fair. The whole thing is kinda odd, but I guess we'll have to see.

You can call LEGO customer support, and they will probably send you a new one. LEGO customer support is top-notch.

Any word back? I heard a rumor, from somebody whom I consider to be a very good source, that North American may not see any of the 2014 sets. I find this very hard to believe though, and I hope he is wrong.

You guys are talking about the black piece that the claw (or whatever it is) is attached to, right? It looks like the same diameter as the other bars in the set, but maybe having the claws attached to it makes it look smaller. Effe, if you say you've seen this in person, then I believe you. Maybe they have two version of this part, one with a pin and with a 1L bar? I dunno. I'm getting old, so maybe my eyes are just playing tricks on me.

I don't think the new piece in the Chima set has a pin on it. It looks like a new piece with a 1L bar.

I see, that's really neat!

That is massive! Looks like a fun project!

Yes, something like that would be perfect. I'm not sure how the steering would be done though. Perhaps the pin holes could be placed vertically instead? I think the ball should also be pointing either up or down to increase turning radius. These are some really nice drawings you are creating.