nerdsforprez

I dunno. I think they are approaching this from a PR and customer service approach. If people build a huge crane, from actual Lego orders, and elements fail they will have so many people ordering replacement parts....

Thanks to you both for the responses. Indeed, I thought this was the case, but just thought I would reach out to others who already built the model for verification. For what it is worth this is one of my favorite builds. It sure is a challenge, which I mean in the best of terms. I love that it is modular. I will provide more opinion once I am finished. I am putting in some of my own cosmetic changes, so I will post them as well. One last word is that this build confirms that I can't see me ever purchasing an official Lego UCS ever again, at least not for the build (parts perhaps, but not to build and display). This set, along with other MOCs I have built from others, are just so vastly superior. Additionally, I am convinced that with all the safety, difficulty restrictions, etc. TLG, even if their designers were to come up with something like this would never approve it for production. This is just too difficult to see them producing on a mass level and expecting the Lego Mass audience to actually be able to build. Once again, I mean this in the best possible way... good stuff.

Could anyone please confirm that the back suspension, while their height does allow for movement with the steering, appear to move very little compared to the front?

Umm..... no. It is a licensed set marketed as the Liebherr LR13000 crane. Have you not read the thread title? 42042 was a regular, untitled crawler crane. This is not. You can't market something as X and have it appear nothing like X.

This will be TLG's defense. All things relating to concerns of tipping over, safety, sets and parts breaking so they don't have to face the PR and customer service nightmare of replacement parts. I get it from this business perspective. I do. But it then begs the question if there is such a concern over safety, PR, customer service for broken parts, etc. then why attempt this build in the first place? Given the TLG business footprint, legal, safety etc., concerns there may just be some builds/creations that are not advisable. Like true RC cars would be. I seriously think that this crane, given their business footprint is one of those builds that never was even a good idea to begin with.....

None of us do. But, mere speculation suggests it is more than the electronics. There reportedly are new elements for the lattice boom sections of the model that are quite large, perhaps robust with much ABS. But still speculation at this point. Read through the beginning of the thread for more details.

If this is an accurate leak then this set is lost to me. Agree to what has been said about too short derrick, incorrect proportions of the tracks, and so much more. Superstructure proportions are so far off... I really do not know how Liebherr approved this. I have always preached the value of just buying Lego and modifying sets to make them more accurate. But with the price tag where it is at this point that is a hard sell. Because of all the work needed to improve the set and have it actually look like an LR 13000 I am not sure I would even buy it at half the cost. IMHO, this set is turning out to be one of the bigger disappointments, for Technic, that I can recall.

Superior according to whom? I think this looks blocky...and the studs look odd...

I see sets only as part packs. Happy with this so far. Don't care about functions. Happy to see DBG.

Thanks!

How do you figure it will be so much heavier? Its not like the Cat is lacking in motors (4) and it has almost 2000 pieces more (proposed) than the Liebherr? Are you counting the counter balance weight? The more I think about this set the more I think much of the cost has to be attributed to the counterbalanced weights (likely new pieces) and whatever is used for the main boom and possible lattice boom sections of the crane. I think this is very unfortunate b/c weight is something so easy to reproduce w/o relying on new expensive elements. I am excited for whatever is proposed for the main sections of the boom and lattice though. If new elements entirely I hope they become available on Bricks and Pieces after some time for a decent price. Perhaps it will be feasible to recreate the build w/o the expensive new weight pieces using older, less expensive electronics (perhaps even PF). I would be interested in that. B/c like others have said, I also was interested in perhaps buying two of these sets and combining them into one huge one... but not now with the price point +600 USD.

ANyone have updates on the corrections to the gearbox? I am at bag three, where the gearbox will start to take form. But I don't want to build it to only have to correct it later....

Rumored to be able to lift 500 grams. In other words, it can't lift its own weight in cash.

The digital render of this model looks great.. but what of the details? It appears huge, and could possibly hold a lot of motors... which would make it a strong puller. Just like the real thing. Details on this would be great.

On page 6 you will see a video where I popped two L PF motors in 42145. Improved the rotor speed a lot. In the previous video, with headphones, you could hear the whipping of the rotors. Well, I replaced the Lego PF motors with those by Mould King and they whip much faster. Great sound. Listen with or without headphones. Doesn't matter. You can hear the whipping of the rotors pretty good. Powered by BuWizz 3.0 on Ludicrous mode.

This is just probably semantics, but to be clear, it is one motor per each wing. Not 2. Indeed, it is a little jerky. I could have geared it down a bit. I thought about it. Ultimately decided not to for 2 reasons: 1: the jerkiness comes from the wing construction itself, not really because of too much torque or speed from the motors. As can be seen at around the 20 sec. mark in the YT video, without the whole wing build, at the attachment point only, the movement is smooth and not jerky. The jerkiness comes because the wings are huge, only one stud thick, and all ABS. also, they are lift arms, not technic bricks, which with that much weight, have quite a bit of flimsy-ness to them. 2: I really won't be positioning them often. I like them much more in their "down" position, and really will be putting them up perhaps when others come to visit and I want to show it off. So, its not a big thing if I only change their position perhaps a few times a month. Probably even less than that. But I did want to keep the function. Thus the motors. I could also add an IR receiver and use remote, to control it more slowly, but again I did not think it demanded that much time. Lastly, recall that the original model, being manual, was also incredibly jerky to raise/lower the wings. Agree. That would be cool. Perhaps up for daytime and down for night (when it is dark and the shuttle would most likely be in operation)

Good to know and keep the discussion alive on non-Lego brands. Some non-Lego brands are fine, some are not

It was a fun project, but honestly I am just happy to have it done. I really dislike it when I have incomplete projects just sitting around. I become "that guy" that starts things but doesn't finish them. With the completion of this I got that off my back

Thank you!

Fun model and great build. I do follow rock bouncer's and agree Cameron's builds rank among the best. Also, it is worth mentioning they are different than rock crawlers. Crawlers, as the name suggests, are slow, geared with tons of torque but also high power. Bouncers need bursts of speed so they can "bounce" in a situation that they can not crawl up. Bouncing can sometimes hurdle over otherwise unclimbable obstacles. This is a great and very capable bouncer. Still think perhaps they best bouncer was built by PTNYC, his "wasp crawler" but your model has a realistic suspension, details such as an engine, etc. so they are not really comparable. Great build and thanks for sharing!

Hello Everyone! Long-time EB member but admittedly I don’t make it over to the SW forum often. So I have had this project on my mind for quite a while. Bought a second-hand UCS Imperial Shuttle many years ago and it just sat in my closet. Parts were donated for this guy here: I just never got around to doing anything with the UCS model. Didn’t want to BL and build the original… too boring. However, with the remaining pieces I had a could easily do this: Mounted it so as to appear as if it were coming out of the wall. Details are explained in the video below, but briefly I added a PF BB with two M PF motors to drive each wing. This replaced the manual operations of the wings that came out the rear of the model in the original. Used a 16L Technic brick as the main mounting point on the back, but also used one screw in the dorsal fin for a mount location as well. Works very well. Very firm. I can have the display with the wings in any position. With the exception of taking out roughly the back quarter of the model, everything else remains the same. Hope you enjoy!

My grandfather drove this vehicle. Brings back so many memories right there....

I think we are speaking different languages here so after these last comments I think I will just leave it at that. But again, to find the true of something you very well don't cater to public opinion. You use science and mathematic modeling. It may make sense from a customer's perspective, but that is because in this context, we mean the customer is biased and does not reflect reality. That is like trying to find a reality of a sport in the perspectives of two sport fans of a different team; in no way would we expect such fans' perspectives to represent reality. Neither do the typical AFOLs perspectives. No, if you expand your model to a larger number of sets with more variation you WILL get an average for price/weight ratio. It won't be a perfect average (unless you sample all possibilities), but its not like increasing the number of sets in a data set arbitrarily gets closer to the actual population average. You will get closer. There are even mathematical thermos that explain this relationship. See my comment below. Statistically this is not likely. Can it happen? Sure, but it is not likely. Averages or median representations of any given entity are found in large samples, where there is an inverse relationship between sampling error and size of the sample. The larger the sample size, the smaller the sampling error.

With all due respect, you won't get to the truth looking at it that way. You could not have picked two more diverse (in terms of pricing) models in your example; truly, two models at the opposite ends of the spectrum. 42127 was an exceptionally great deal and 42125 was an exceptionally horrible deal (in terms of price). The truth resides in looking what is in between those two extremes. Prediction models only work when using large sample sizes; not two polar opposites end of a continuum. Also, you have to look at variability; meaning, your model has to include small sets as well as large sets. Correlation and regression coefficients exist because they look at overlapping variability; which obviously assumes there is variability in the first place in the items you are interested in (in this case set cost and weight or piece count).

Everyone has been clear that we are speculating here. I have qualified my statements several times with "I am keeping an open mind and won't make up my mind on this set until we have firm data." The two are not mutually exclusive. One can speculate, with the known data that we do have, yet at the same time be open to changing their stance if new data appears that would justify such a change.... I think that would be really unfortunate. I would rather use my own weights, metal, coins, whatever around the house at NP extra cost to me than Lego official weights. This is exactly why I am no purist. Large MOC cranes have been around for decades with folks using their own weights. Hell, I have cut steel for my own weights, used fishing weights, coins, etc. for my own weights. You can even build what look like real crane weights out of Lego, fill them with whatever... and it all looks Lego. It does make me curious.... would Lego outsource metal from some other company if they were to use metal weights in this set? How do folks think they approached the metal hook from long ago. It could certainly account for the price increase.... but at least IMO, still not justify it.