Johnny1360

I do like this, good job. I think the reason I like it so much is the relatively simply looks.It doesn't look overdone.

Long gone are the days of me randomly buying LEGO sets on a whim. Pricing on current sets make it so I am a little more attentive of what I am getting. As such I find it very easy to figure out the sticker situation long before the set is even readily available, in most cases. I have built some Speed Champion sets that have ridiculously high sticker count and in such cases in can be tedious, however lately they have moved away from such sets. I have noticed there are more prints and less stickers in the newer ones. No one can deny this is a step in the right direction and hopefully the trend continues. Personally if it really bothered me I would avoid sets with high sticker counts but it doesn't. To be clear I do not buy big premium sets, where it may be more of an issue, rarely spending more than $150. I did buy the Orient Express though and although it had few stickers some of the prints were off, which is a little harder to fix, unlike repositioning a sticker. I do wish you luck though, as it seems to matter to some.

Looks very good, I am curious how the windshield part is attached though. It would be nice to have a more modern sloped windshield part, that doesn't also include the roof.

So now that city vehicles have received the Speed Champions treatment and have been much improved actually fun to build, I think it's time for city buildings to get the Modular building treatment, instead of the facades we get. Obviously not full blown Modulars just an upgrade like the vehicles. I really feel like we need more structures for all these Great vehicles.

Long ago I was a forest fire fighter in the western US, so I especially like what you have done. It very much reminds me of a Unimog I once saw, always thought it was the coolest fire fighting vehicle I ever saw, it actually had a flame thrower mounted on it for starting back fires. Really like what you have done here, one minor thing though. In all my time working forest fires I never saw a truck with a ladder on it, even though they are quite common for structure fire trucks.

I have always been amazed how prolific you are as a builder and think most of your builds are very well done. I assume since these are alternate builds they only have parts that came with the original model, that makes it even more impressive. Whenever I try this I end up using some elements from other sets, so I understand how difficult some of these builds can be. Great work and I much appreciate you sharing your handiwork, thanks.

Is it possible to make one motor run in reverse and the other forward? If not this won't work as one gear spins counter clockwise and the other clockwise, under normal operation. I actually wanted to do this with a current project of mine.

I actually do like the red contrasting colors, doesn't bother me a bit. I also think it is funny that it constituents color vomit to some.

Seems to have been resolved, for the time being, as I can actually navigate the site. Yay

I have been unable to view the site at all for at least a week now, the only way I was even able to post this was to wait several minutes for the page to load. Hopefully it gets cleared up soon because as it is I consider the site unnavigable. I am using my phone maybe that is part of it but I have used this phone for years and have done all I can think of on my end.

I do enjoy building with a mix of System and Technic. It may be easier for me since I grew up with System, there was no Technic then. What's cool is that I am building a City set right now, 60478 Cement Mixer and it has given me an idea or inspiration on a steering solution for portal hubs in Technic. Now I want to drop what I'm doing and build a proof of concept, while the memory is fresh, lol.

Not sure we really needed the entire parts list posted, lol but I am anxious to see what the set sticker free looks like.

Yes I stand corrected, reddish brown, regardless, as near as I can figure the parts in question are, as near as I can figure 6 to 8 years old. However they became brittle over a period of time, they didn't start out brittle, that is what I find concerning. They were not subjected to harsh environments either and the failure rate is close to 50%, so far and I am sure the degradation is continuing.

Yeah I wouldn't want to go much more of an incline. Also like the use of road plates because you can easily replace some of the smooth 2x4 plates with their studded counter parts. That way you can stick a vehicle on the incline without it rolling down to the bottom of the hill.

After my recent experience with dark brown, that is one vehicle I would steer clear of, nothing like watching your parts crumble like potato chips upon disassembly to avoid usage.

I really like this, the snot walls, the seamless angles on the base and the scale that is big, without being bloated and overdone. It works as a playset as well as a display piece. Very nicely done, thanks for sharing it.

It would be interesting to see the electronic components in those BAS elements.

I think this is a great idea and you seem to have worked out all the details, I have always thought a LEGO city looks much better when it isn't just laid out in a flat plane. I hope you don't mind if I use this in some far off future build.

This rings true for me as well and while I do have a well sorted collection to build from, I often just free build with a bin of clearance priced sets. For example, I have a bin with 4 or 5 HP sets that don't necessarily appeal to me but were on clearance, making them substantially less expensive. Nobody would look at these creations and even think of Harry Potter.

I have been waiting with anticipation for this part of your build, the boats, glad to see you are there now. It looks like you are off to a great start, can't wait to see the finished ships, they are quite large, great to see.

Finally decided to disassemble my Cantina MOC, it was favorite and quite frankly my best, 32x32 build, using sets for parts that are all less than 10 years old. It was also a beast of a build, several thousand pieces. I immediately noticed many pieces had broken, all dark brown, go figure. I had thought although it used to be common place TLG had "fixed" the issue, not so, more than just a few pieces are so brittle I can't even disassemble them. I mean they are so brittle they are like potato chips, any pressure at all and they disintegrate into tiny crumbs. Sadly it appears to effect all my plates, big and small, only dark brown. Has anyone else been having this issue? To me it is unacceptable, especially since it was a known issue that was supposed to be addressed. This is so sad, I guess I will remove Dark Brown from my color palette, since they are unusable anyway. So far it's just plates but can bricks be far behind. Edit; Had to pause on the tear down, just too many pieces breaking, I feel like I should document what's happening and I just don't have time now. It is quite alarming how many of the plates are shattering, close to 50% so far or about 30 different plates. You can literally reduce these pieces to dust just by gently squeezing them between your finger and thumb.These all came from sets between 2016-2018, so apparently the problem hadn't been addressed yet. I would be very concerned if I had a lot of sets of this time period, which I do. I did take very good care of these parts and did nothing but use them for their intended purpose. Also makes me very leery of purchasing any sealed sets of that time period.

Admittedly I have not bought any new sets, this year, so as I was looking into the latest offerings, I was floored by the prices and vowed not to buy any new sets. Turns out I was viewing Australian site instead of North American, talk about sticker shock, wow. I am acutely aware of the price of LEGO, it has always been an expensive hobby, not for everyone. In my case, I have certainly been buying less with each passing year. I have also noticed that nearly every thread about new sets makes mention of high prices, much moreso than previous years. Soon I am afraid I will simply no longer be able to afford lego. Which makes me wonder do others have a limit as to how much is too much, or do you just accept it and keep buying? Fortunately I have amassed enough lego to keep me busy for the rest of my life and would be okay just buying some loose parts here and there. I understand this is a touchy subject for many and some even consider it bad form to complain. When if ever will the average consumer say, enough is enough, screw you TLG?

TLG really cares about what I think, they must, every time I have any sort of interaction with them, they request I fill out a brief survey.

Thanks everyone for the quick responses, lot of good to know stuff. Looks like I will be replacing all the gears in my latest build, hopefully with spur gears and proper bracing (extremely important) and the tips provided, I can eliminate the skipping that is plaguing my crawler. I foolishly used the crown gears simply because they were all black.

Couldn't have stated it better, especially the compressed format part. It just makes sense.