dhc6twinotter

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.

Something like that would be really nice to have, especially if it could be mounted inside a rim. It reminds a bit of the birfields in the Toyota Land Cruisers.

I actually thought the Technic team did a pretty good job in 2013, and IMHO, that was their best year since I got back into LEGO 4 or so years ago. There were some great sets last year. 2014 may not look as good to us AFOLs (plane is awesome though!), but we aren't LEGO's target demographic. LEGO is going to sell a ton of airplanes and remote control loaders, mostly to kids. The loader, especially, has a huge amount of playability. We may not like how it looks or works, but the kids will. And, LEGO should keep building sets aimed at kids. If it wasn't for the kids, there wouldn't be any sets for the comparatively few of us AFOLs to buy. So, if LEGO feels the need to do the same ideas over and over to sell sets, I'm fine with that. I may not buy the sets, but the important thing is that it keeps LEGO in business. Anyways, to the topic at hand here. There are some excellent proposals. I especially like the idea of being able to buy individual parts. I remember when back in the day, LEGO would allow us to buy individual pneumatic parts, tires/rims, gear packs, appearance packages, etc. Whether or not that would work depends on how competitive they could be with bricklink. I'm all for more universal sets as well. I still kick myself for not getting the Control Center II. What a cool set. I'm fine with just 2 waves, but of course 3 would be better for us! The "More Interaction" section sounds nice as well, however, I don't think it would be financial viable for LEGO to do it. Whatever instructions LEGO releases would have to be for a model that passes LEGO's standards. This means that a designer is going to have to spend just as much time building/designing a model for instructions as he/she would spend designing an actual set. Plus, an instruction developer is going to have to make the instructions. This all adds up to a lot of man hours ($$$), and they will probably end up losing money, especially if they are giving away the instructions. Not sure I understand breaking Technic up into action, universal, and expert series. I don't think something like the Mobile Crane necessarily takes more of an "expert" to build than a pull-back racer. It just takes somebody with more patience and the ability to follow a larger instruction booklet. My 6 year-old nephew built much of the Mobile Crane, including the superstructure and gearbox (we still haven't finished it though…I stole some parts for a moc). He follows instructions better than I do. And, I know LEGO already markets sets as "expert" sets, but it doesn't take a LEGO expert to follow instructions for a large or detailed set. That's just marketing, imho. So, breaking up the Technic line into categories may help with marketing and may make the line a bit more organized, but I don't think it necessarily differentiates the newbies from the veteran builders. A super flagship would be awesome, but I don't think I would shell out more than what I paid for the Mobile Crane. I don't think many people would. It sure would be cool to see what LEGO would come up with though. I hope I don't sound like a party-pooper here. There are some really great ideas being presented, and I hope LEGO can pursue some of these.

I saw this in person at BrickCon, and this thing is amazing. The amount of figuring that went into this is mind-boggling.

That black one is awesome! I like how the grill is done on these too…didn't notice that earlier.

I'm going to skip the bulldozer. It looks like the cargo plane will be my only 2014 Technic purchase. That just means more money for City sets! Woohoo! The arctic theme is nice, and I like the new modular restaurant.

Welcome! Wish I could get that plane...

I'm really liking that plane! It reminds me of the old C119 Flying Boxcars. The icebreaker looks great as well. Overall, this whole arctic line is really nice!

I'm running behind as well, but I'm still shooting to have my project complete in a week. Doubt that will happen, but we'll see. Been busy with a class I'm taking, but I made some good progress yesterday.

That thing is awesome! Fantastic job creating the bodywork. The AC700 has been on my list of things to build for a long time. The thought of building one of these with LEGO is part of what got me back into LEGO. I've been collecting parts and tinkering around with boom designs for a while, but haven't put any serious effort into the crane project.

Very nice combine harvester! All the functions in the head are pretty fantastic!

Awesome! Welcome back to LEGO. Many of us on the forum were away from LEGO at one point, and it's always nice to see somebody else getting back into it. BTW, I used to have a '90 4Runner, which is basically the same as the '92, just with a different front end. I own a 2000 4Runner now.

I think Barman's V8 is probably the most realistic I've seen: Here is a 16 cylinder radial engine I built: My engine isn't the most realistic though. There is no valve train, and the majority of double row radials were either 14 or 18 cylinder engines. There are a few other small scale engines with working valve trains, but I've never seen one that had a true four-stroke setup (valves open on every-other crank rotation).

The dozer doesn't look that bad to me. I'm curious to see how the functions work. There doesn't appear to be any LAs, but perhaps they're a bit more hidden. I like that there is a fake engine, but I wonder if there is a differential or if the engine is driven off of one track. My guess is the latter, but we'll see. It looks like a knob on top of the cab to control one of the functions, or perhaps both functions through a two output gearbox.