howitzer

Ah, that might be true. I thought one of the turntables would have 64 teeth and seeing those worm gears mesh with them it should work. But alas, the turntable has 60 teeth so it's different size than the new gear. So yeah, it still seems the only gear to mesh with it in whole number spacing is the 16T gear.

I believe the other worm gear, 27938, will also mesh with the 64T gear with whole stud spacing. I also don't think the half-stud offset is a huge problem when meshing with 8, 24 and 40T gears, though this obviously depends on what you're building.

True, I'd rather say "worst year so far". There's always room for more disappointment.

If you take a bit of time to read the comments about this year's lineup you'll see that it's definitely not just you.

In your second to last line you surely meant something other than 42043 which is MB Arocs, right? Anyway, I like pneumatics but other than that I pretty much agree. Technic of today seems to be Speed Champions but with larger scale, uglier designs and steering, but that's it. The Unimog is sort of interesting but I don't like the colour scheme so I probably won't buy it. And beside that there's nothing remotely interesting.

2023 had the Liebherr crane which wasn't without flaws, but at least it was properly Technic. Same for the Moon rover of 2024, which I think is off-putting to some due to it's theme though it's a very good set with novel and interesting functionality. I'd take any one of these any day over a full year's range of cars.

No, you're not.

Numerous stores in Bricklink have those with prices starting around 0,60€/piece so that seems like an obvious way forward.

Still works here.

No problems here.

Yes, pinhole would work, even though pinhole sits very small amount (1/20th of a brick) higher than the studhole on the side of the headlight brick so in theory it wouldn't be exactly on grid either, but such a small difference is insignificant. These flaws scream of a rush job with much of the quality control skipped.

Did you not watch the video at the time point I mentioned? It's place in the build is shown there quite clearly and if you watch it, you'll see that it indeed receives a stud and not a bar (66909 in particular). On the other side (where the illegality occurs) is also headlight brick, but raised one plate so the sideways stud of the headlight brick collides with the backside of the other one, this is all explained in detail there. Oh and I meant the video by Tiago Catarino which was linked on Thursday, not Racingbrick's video which ignores the entire matter.

It's used to receive stud sideways, see the video Auroralampinen posted above at 5 minutes in. A 1x1 brick with axlehole could've been used in it's place. This could be an explanation, as these problems indeed seem really easy to solve and these kind of flaws should never get through a proper quality control.

The two major flaws mentioned in the video are really bad, I mean how hard can it be to build the driveshaft properly, especially as the other end isn't connected into anything? Half-inserted axle isn't going to hold the gear end in place. For the other problem your mileage might vary, but in my view it's even worse as there's going to be stress and damage to the parts over longer periods of time. I was seriously considering getting this set even though it's a car, as it's finally something different as far as cars go, but now I don't know.

As was said in Racingbrick's video, it's car precisely because cars have mass appeal. Yes we get too many cars in Technic but this one breaks the pattern in that it's non-licensed and packed with functions so it should be far more interesting to Technic fans than whatever you can find in official sets. I would also get a kinetic sculpture, GBC or clockwork any day over another car, but let's face it: there's nowhere near as much market for those as there is for cars. As for the model itself, the functions seem great and the design is nice but I don't like the colour scheme. Somehow the white doesn't sit well at all in the model, perhaps it should be either completely red and black or perhaps the white should be replaced with some other colour. I guess this is a matter of taste and I'm still going to vote for it, just for the sake of being Technic, but if I were to ever build it, I'd try something else in the place of those white parts.