bonox

I use tweezers fairly often for putting small knots in string for cranes, etc.

If the company were bought lock stock and barrel by the chinese and turned the lot into the quality of the current knockoffs i'd quit buying new stuff and think about getting rid of a lot of my old stuff before the law of lemons started taking hold

Since you offered, some pics of the carrier drive and steering mechanisms would be wonderful please. From a quick glance at a similar but smaller chassis here, there looked like a combination of mechanical and hydraulic drive to different axles. Any clues about the steering links and support hyadraulics would be great. I've also seen some with hydraulic over air struts as well that let the driver compensate for sloping terrain. Does this have any capability in that regard? I know the Demag AC50 can be rocked side to side about 20 degrees either side of vertical but don't know if the larger rigs are built the same way.

Charming creation and very nice story to go with it. Great effort

treat it as the reverse of a bricklink order. Sort set parts into sub-bags, then bag those bags into a set if you're worried about sorting. Repeat for all sets, then squeeze them into your available storage boxes. Otherwise just bag each set. From experience, you're better off using larger bags with stuff floating around in them, because it makes it easier to change the bag shape to get lots to fit into one box. (Think about fitting tennis balls into a box in round only shape, or what would happen if you could change the shape of a ball). Poisson's ratio is great for bags of ball bearings, but not for interlocking parts :D And if you start using bigger boxes, I can whole heartedly recommend labelling what sets you put in what boxes! You'll get minimum space with minimum number of boxes. Fewer bigger boxes gets you more lego per volume than many smaller boxes. Think about the tennis balls again and what happens if your small box is 1.5 balls high.

All else being equal, doubling your number of batteries will get you twice the run time. You need to think about application though - you'd need to spread the two driving motors across both battery packs for example, or you'll flatten one and not the other which is pointless. You could also link the two boxes to achieve the same result, at the cost of another cable run. In general, short direct power runs are best. Where possible, avoid gearing, lots of 'bearings' and especially changes of angle like universal and CV joints. to be honest, you'd probably get better results from either: 1. A custom LIPO battery pack that you make fit into where ever you have space or 2. My favourite, use a power cable. Not realistic for general outdoor RC use, but I only run my stuff around on the desk or floor. This isn't as silly as it sounds though. If you're building a truck/train etc, then the power cable can run to a trailer, tender, next carriage etc where you can put a very large battery if you want. Other things to think about: use wheels instead of tracks drive 1 fixed axle instead of multiple drive a fixed axle instead of a steering axle. use a motor with speed as close as possible to your desired speed, so you don't need intermediate gearing. Get weight out of the structure Find real high capacity cells if you're currently using worn out yumcha chinese *1 billion mAhr* cells. Use bigger cells. A AA cell for example generally contains at least double the energy of a AAA cell, often 3 or more times.

doesn't this already exist?

from the bottom of the first post http://mocplans.com/designer/5571towtruck.html

Clever! Good luck with finishing it - you're going great so far :)

I've not tried it, but observation tells me that putting Victor Imaginator's avatar together would be pretty frustrating

packaging electric wiring into Sheo's excavator is easy if you don't care about damaging the cables. If you do, it's a challenging exercise! Probably my most fun difficulty is the stack of hose runs in the 8868.

out of curiosity, how do you mount the motor power leads onto the receivers when they face one another like that?

ahh - I actually understand your question now. Yes, the black cat (5571) set had a V8 and as you say probably steers it into bulldog territory

The prices of complete sets are ridiculous. I'd much rather substitute alternative parts and colours, chrome bits myself etc than carve up two original sets. I'm looking at about 800 euro to get a pair landed here, and that'll buy a crazy amount of stuff from BL that's cheap and plentiful, plus an 8642 for the air tanks, hook and a few cylinders. I could end up building one without wheels as a garage queen (or perhaps build a maintenance routine around it) but it'd be nice to have it complete in spirit if not all the quoted parts. It's most likely an inline 6, but spacein lego design pretty well precludes that. A Kenworth T650 with a Detroit series 60 diesel for example is pretty similar to this model https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Kenworth_T650_tow_truck.jpg

It's an internal TLG reference to how the design was passed - A Wonky Directive. I built one with none of the rare parts except wheels and steering rack and I like it.

if you load your existing parts into rebrick, it will tell you what you're missing. You can also specify which part groups and/or existing sets you have you want included in the calculation. you need an account, and be logged into it with parts/sets etc loaded for this function to work alternatively, use brickstock or similar to subtract your existing stock list from the MOC list. Ignore the zero and negative quantities and what's left you need to buy. Make sure both sets are equivalent (eg used or new) or you'll get funny results.

As an aside, text searching can also be handy if you are looking for things that have different part numbers (or moulds) but are otherwise substitutable. They have elements of the same name, but not the same part number. To do this in wanted lists results in lots of duplication and you need to keep track of how many of each you are wanting.

Having recently bought the instructions for a look, I'm wondering if anyone has found a third party tyre that would suit this application? Many of the suggestions in the 3rd party tyre thread are based on crawler or racing types rather than the tall thin truck type tyres.

If it's built correctly and the LA's are fully retracted, then the expression "they all do that" applies. It will probably rock on the turntable enough to touch at the front if you take the batteries out.

look at sellers feedback. It can be very revealing, even if all positive. Most of them aren't a proper business. They're done around full time jobs, managing kids and forgetting to look at your email for a few days. With a seller with thousands of feedback most saying fast post etc, you've got workable history. If not, it's pot luck, but it's a bit unfair to compare most BL sellers to amazon. Ordering 4 bricks is also very different to a few thousand pieces in hundreds of lots.

Barman's V8 Sheo's RH400 excavator Ingmar - Granite Truck and lowloader Jennifer Clark - AC50 Crane Han - Dragline and Hauler Gerger - GMK6400 on the to do list is NK's Predator and Pat-Ards latest trailer.

btw, for individual parts, use the extended "show more filters" option ie, under the BUY option, search for the part. When you get the results screen, at top is sort by condition, number per page and sort by options. Just below this is a hyperlink called "Show more filters" you can then specify "seller is Located In"

My pleasure - it probably works best for those of us living in Australia - less trawling pages of the list looking for your country.

there's a good reason you need an operator certificate after training to operate large plant. Good control layout and marking helps a lot as well, but you train people to use these things in the dark!

it's an extra step, but if you put it in a wanted list and then use the "By Shop" option you can sort by "Shop Location"