neepheid

Will you be continuing with the Technicopedia? Your site is responsible for my getting back into Technic Lego after a long dark age, and I'm very grateful for it :)

I've just finished building the main model of this and was about to do the buggy but I'd love to build this model! Using all the parts from the main set is very impressive also. Great work!

Hah, that's really cool. It reminds me of a machine which basically rumbled the skins off of potatoes like that when I was working in a hotel kitchen when I was young. It was all enclosed though (bah, health and safety!) so seeing the potato (or tattie, as I would call it) rumbling around in there pleased me. I also remember that even with the professional/industrial machine you still had a little bit of peeling/taking off bad bits to do once the machine was finished. Great model!

Thanks for all the kind words people, I was quite nervous about putting something so rudimentary up but you've put my mind at ease and it looks like this forum is a good place to be. I do have some studless Technic (buying a 42065 RC Tracked Racer at Christmas is what kickstarted my return to Lego because I'd never seen RC Lego before and it sounded very cool :) ) but it was a bit of a culture shock/paradigm shift. I think with studless beams you have to be very preoccupied with how they are going to join together, as opposed studded bricks which often inherently join together without you having to think about it. Consequently, early on in builds it's quite nitty gritty and in minute detail as you pin together parts that in the old world one would have simply pushed into each other and on to the next thing. I'll get the hang of it though ;)

Hi there Painful baby steps alert. I have this nagging feeling that I'm wasting everyone's time with this. I have been hesitant to post this when I see some of the amazing creations that people are putting together, but I guess one has to start somewhere. I don't have much Lego yet, only got sets 8860 and 8845 to play with and old school studded Technic is what I'm used to so I decided to try a simple mod of an existing model. In this case, a super simple/boring model - the Jeep from the 8030 Universal set (a set I used to own). (Picture from Technicopedia - hope that's OK) Because I don't have the right bits, I had to widen the track of the vehicle by 2 studs. I built everything else as per the instructions (except for the rear bit where the steering control pops out - didn't have a 2x4 plate with holes so had to improvise a bit). Perhaps because of the increase in width, the model just wouldn't steer - it went pretty much straight on and skidded the wheels. Not much I can do about the steering so I decided to add a diff to the rear wheels. Yes, I could have simply split the axle as it's not being driven by anything, but what challenge would that be? So I modified the chassis to make space for the diff and fitted it. Immediate improvement - the car could steer properly! I'm enjoying my first differential gear ever, having never got that advanced when I was a kid. After that, I decided to try and make it look better so I had a go at forming a body around it. Tried to go for a Series One Land Rover type of feel at the front, then went a bit mad with spot lights and bull bars :) Anyway, here it is now: I could carry on but I don't have enough parts never mind the right colours (like those annoying black bits in my otherwise grey bull bars and ran out of axle pins so the roof spots are attached with 4 axles and bushes) so I think I'll stop there. It's pretty lame compared to all the amazing stuff I see posted up here, but I thought I'd share and hopefully the next thing you see from me will be a bit more interesting. Onwards and upwards.

I've only recently got back into Lego, so I only have a few sets - 8860, 8845, 8074 (en route) and 42065. Remembering the one massive bin of Lego as a child - time was less important than annoying one's parents with the swooshing/rumbling sound of a child fishing for a particular piece of Lego amongst thousands - I got one of these things from Ikea to start with at least a degree of organisation: From the top left: pins,bushes,steering arms etc. cogs,racks,pulleys etc. axles,shocks,pipes etc. bricks plates all Technic bricks, plates, beams, wheels etc. in the big one at the bottom. Will probably outgrow this in a year, but it's a start and I do find it keeps everything pretty organised - even if it is a bit of a rummage. Trying to find one of my six axle pins in a sea of regular pins is a bit like a game of Where's Wally. After that, I'd probably start subdividing by size/function rather than colour. Colour last. If I have to start subdividing by colour too then I think I'll need a Lego room in the house :)

Hi folks My name is Matt and I live in Aberdeen, Scotland. I was a massive fan of Lego when I was a kid, lots of Legoland city and space stuff then got into Technic - had sets 854 (Go Kart), 8030 (Universal Set) and 8844 (Helicopter). Then computers came along and ruined everything :) Fast forward 30 or so years, and I'm in the Lego shop in Glasgow for fun and to remind myself what yellow looks like. As I was browsing the shelves, I spotted the 42065 (RC Tracked Racer) and had to do a double take - I had no idea there was even such a thing as remote controlled Lego (I'm from an age when if you wanted to motorise something, you had to follow behind it with a battery box on a wire, I always thought that was pretty lame, even then) - imagine how out of the loop I felt when I discovered that Power Functions had been a thing since 2007! Anyway, I bought it there and then. Studless confused me and didn't feel right - I felt like I could only follow the instructions and couldn't see until way into the build where things were heading. I'm sure that's just simply a case of unfamiliarity with the new stuff. Since then, I got back into it. Old school stuff first, I picked up an 8845 Dune Buggy off eBay to ease myself in, then corrected a childhood wrong and got hold of a classic 8860 Car Chassis - a set I coveted as a child but never got to own. Still amazed at the size of it, even as an adult. I have recently obtained an 8074 (Universal Building Set with Flex System) - I got it for a good price and it has quite a few parts in it I don't have. In the (near) future I'm looking to acquire an 8862 Backhoe - I know there are ones with more pneumatics, but I love the hybrid pneu/mechanical nature of this one, then get into more studless stuff (because that's how the world works these days) - possibly eyeing the 42043 Arocs... When I'm not puddling about with Lego, I play bass in a band called The Inevitable Teaspoons, play a bit of badminton, and enjoy a dram now and again. Anyway, that's quite enough of the shaggy dog story, I'm eating up your precious building time.