everybrickasculpture

Probably the coolest lego tractor in the world, well done!

I'm very interested in getting my hands on this asap, and can go ahead and pay up front to help with development costs. Might be helpful for testing too.

The design of the chassis is seriously awesome, I love how you were able to add control arms at this scale.

8880, it was the first technic set I saw that really made me lust. It still holds up great today; tons of features, great looks, cool parts, fun to play with. The first technic car that lego made that perfected the formula. I'd give an honorable mention to the Unimog, 8110. It introduced some awesome parts and is still a blast to play with, and looks great on display.

I think it's easier to recreate the mechanics of the subject, when available. You can't always do this but it's getting easier and easier with new parts. To me, aesthetics come secondary to mechanics, but I don't really see the two as being in competition. Aesthetics are informed and influenced by the mechanics, they are not necessarily in opposition. I prefer to mix the two. I don't consider them separate systems, just different styles. I just build whatever appeals to my inner 10 year old. This tends to be sci-fi stuff or race-inspired stuff. For design challenges, I usually try to come up with solutions that would be done in the real world, and build a test model to see how viable it is. This is usually an iterative process. I am a mechanical engineer in the automotive industry, and I would say my lego process mirrors my real-world process to some degree, although my budget tends to be less, and there is less rigorous testing. But lots of guessing, testing, and tweaking. I choose both! To go from standard bricks to technic, you will need to learn some mechanical principles, and how to make stable structures. You can do this to some degree by building sets, but I think the best way to learn is to pick up some motors and just start playing around. Making a basic car with steering and a differential would be a great place to start.

Looks great, I could really use something like this.

Very impressive suspension setup, well done. I second the request for the bearings source, and would you be willing to upload the 3d printed parts somewhere? I think those could be useful for a lot of people. You will probably want to glue the tires onto the rims, and consider inserting some foam in the tires. This is necessary for any RC with weight and power.

I will write more about my experiences with using Zene's brushless kits later, but I will say that I'm pretty happy with the parts so far. The integrated planetary reduction motor is really quite nice. I would recommend picking up a kit from them if you're curious. Here are the three cars that I've finished so far.