howitzer

Available for pre-order where I live, for 339,90€ with availability starting at 1.8. For some reason it's not available in lego.com yet. https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/795526/LEGO-Technic-42143-Ferrari-Daytona-SP3

What a parts pack, rarely so many new parts and recolours are seen in one set.

I've often had problems distinguishing between DBG and black in instructions, so I don't think the grayscale-coding would work very well, at least unless you include white. Including also the exterior colour would help a lot (and be a B-model friendly). Whatever the colour coding scheme is, the most important would be to use the colour sparingly, with only a few pieces here and there which divert from the general grayscale chassis.

Thanks for the review @kbalage, always a pleasure to watch!

Still no cup part with pin though.

Thanks a lot everyone! I'll maybe do some touching up and then get the final photos for the entry. I thought of that, but I decided to use yellow bushes as a colour of "warning" which pops out from the background, fitting nicely to a construction machine.

I hope they introduce some new gears in the future that'll be compatible with the new bevel gears in order to make those useful for more than differentials. I guess you could use them with the differential housing to provide place for a locking axle in the larger gear if you _really_ needed 7:11 ratio, but that's bulky and complicated. Other than that, I agree that there's a problem with the direction Technic is heading, as the selection of technically interesting manual sets is so thin. I mean, the Tow truck and Offroader are great, but something more would be nice. Perhaps the waste handler and the helicopter to be released later this year will provide us more fun?

You might be on to something here. These supercars appeal to much wider audience than the CAT, which requires TLG to pay special attention to the customers who just might come back if their building experience is pleasant, but who'll turn away to never buy anything again if they make a mistake and the thing won't work as expected. Sure it's their mistake of not following instructions, but people tend to want to place blame anywhere but onto themselves. And while it's impossible to have nobody making mistakes, the amount of dissatisfied customers can be minimized. At some point of course it becomes too much, though personally I don't care that much if the interior is colour vomit or not, as long as the finished thing looks nice. As for the CAT, the buyers are probably much more experienced than Ferrari buyers, so they (usually) can follow instructions and also know better than to complain at TLG if they make a mistake. But as someone said, none of the above matters if the instructions themselves have critical errors...

I'm almost finished, only some little touches remain. The final size is 7488 cubic studs (L: 27, H 18, W 16 studs). I struggled a lot with the outriggers as I wanted to have one in each corner, positioned at an angle, and to operate them simultaneously with only one knob. I also wanted to make them self-locking by geometry, which forced half-stud offsets, complicating matters further. I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the result as it feels somewhat like a kludge, but it works and doesn't look too bad. The arm was quite a straightforward build, though the geometry required some fiddling before I got it right. I also wanted to use a pneumatic hose to simulate the tubing through which concrete is pumped to the tip, and to make a infinitely rotatable joint inside the turntable so that the external hose could be attached to the chassis. The arm would be even better if there were more articulated joints, but I'm not sure the scale permits such complexity, and remaining time definitely doesn't. There's also a weight brick acting as a counterweight. The colour scheme (red, along with LBG/black) was forced by the boom housing, which I only own in red (ok, I do have them in yellow and blue too, but those currently assembled in Zeux and Tow Truck). The tracks are slightly modified tracks from 42121. As there's not much time left, I didn't want to risk unfinished entry by attempting to fix what's not broken. Some photos follow:

I believe the colour vomit issue is due to the set being marketed mainly at casual builders - people who have only done few or none Technic sets before and are not that experienced or knowledgeable in Technic building. At least the designers at TLG seem to believe that the colour vomit helps to build correctly, and considering the scale and complexity of the build, it's important that the builder gets it right. For us who care about the looks of the insides too in addition to having better building skills, the vomit is of course unnecessary eyesore, but TLG probably knows where their money lies and sadly it's not us hardcore AFOLs. But I guess one can just replace the oddly coloured chassis parts with LBG/DBG/black ones.

Yeah, I could've used that in black for my TC22 entry, but unfortunately I only have those in DBG, which look somewhat out of place in it... So definitely a welcome addition.

You're not wrong here. Something is amiss in the quality control department of TLG. These are the kinds of mistakes that shouldn't pass even the most basic QC. Yeah, the regional pricing is all over the place as always. Though I wonder what were the prices of Sian in 2020, were aussies ripped off there too or was its price more in line with the rest of the world?

I don't thing it's not about the set being worth more, I believe it's about inflation becoming visible in the consumer prices. Had they been swapped (Ferrari released in 2020 and Sian now) the prices would probably be swapped too. --- Now that I watched the Racing Brick's video, I'm somewhat more ambivalent of the set. There seems to be surprisingly many errors which shouldn't be there at this kind of set, like the messed up gear sequence or missing panels at the rear. But those are something I think I can get over with as they're easily fixable. It's really disappointing that this set doesn't really offer much in terms of functionality (new functions or more realistic functions), but then, I wasn't expecting much. I've never built a supercar set before, so I'm interested in the building experience, and this set shows promise with that, despite the minimally functional insides. The new parts are great but I wonder how the new differential gears will be used in the future, or if there will be more sizes to match them? Beyond the new parts, there's tons of red parts, which makes it great parts pack in a useful colour, unlike the Sian or Chiron. I'm also glad that the new spur gears are used extensively, as I already have far more 12 and 20T double bevel gears than I could ever find use for. In the end it seems I have to think long and hard about buying this set or find a good discount. I saw the Sian for just over 200€ at some point, so perhaps there will be a similar offer for this one? I'm also expecting the other Technic sets to be functionally more interesting, so probably buying those first anyway and I'll then see if the Ferrari is still interesting.

For the first time I'm tempted to buy a Technic car set even without extreme discount. It looks great, has some interesting new parts and generally great parts selection.

Thanks for the info! I'm considering your offer, I just fear that it'll end up mostly as dust collector. But I'll have to think about it and see if I still want to get one!

Very interesting project, TLG should've done something like this right from the start. I'm not sure though if I need one, as I already have the RI hub, but for those who only have the C+ hub, this will definitely increase playability a lot. Assuming the Kickstarter campaign is successful, where can one buy it afterwards and how much will it cost?

Don't know what this is/will be, but TLG really needs to get their megablocks together with software and make a single, unified app/interface that allows using the whole product range in the same system. Preferably so that it's user-customizable so that someone not interested in coding can exclude code blocks/python stuff while those interested only in making their own code can hide the set-specific pre-made control interfaces.

I have rectangular panel plates in one box, triangular panels in two boxes (left and right), and the rest of the panels in another box. The last one I will have to split into more boxes soon, perhaps with fender-type panels in one and the rest in another or something along those lines. In the end it comes to how many parts you have, as increasing the number of non-identical pieces in the same box makes searching harder and at some point you want to split them.

Seconding @allanp and @kbalage on the windscreen. Either there should be no window parts (like now) or there should be a proper window part for every window, not just the windscreen. And then more panels is needed for the gapless and sleek look. And then you might as well buy a die cast model.

Maybe. I once proposed a tower crane set for Technic, but someone said it would be really boring to assemble and so TLG wouldn't release such a set. But you also got a point in the various stadiums and stuff, at least those sets marketed strictly for adults can diverge from the principle of interesting building experience. Yeah, stacking bricks is way more satisfying than stacking liftarms as, at least in my opinion, a pin connection is more annoying to make than a stud connection. The interesting part of Technic indeed lies in the mechanisms and functions, so care should be taken to make building those interesting. Building stuff with no idea of what it's going to be is kinda boring.

Not to mention that it would be exceedingly boring as a building experience, with the endless liftarm connecting to make the booms. There's no way an official Lego set would look like that.

I have kinda the same feelings. The previous supercars were mostly really boring, but this one at least looks good and comes in a useful colour, unlike the two previous ones. But I'm really hoping for some novel functionality. I had 8865 as a kid and it feels that no supercar after that one has had that much more to show in terms of technical features so hopefully they made at least a little bit of effort to push forward with this one.

Yeah, but worm gear requires so much of knob-turning that I prefer something that's faster to operate. But I will think about it. Not exactly, just the tracks. They are mainly placeholders to stabilize the thing as I needed quickly something to keep the arm upright and to give a feeling of size and I happened to have assembled 42121 at and so I just took the tracks from it. I will make better ones if I have time.

I thought I wouldn't have time to participate, but looks like I got some free time on my hands now that there's still couple of weeks left before the contest deadline. So I wanted to participate, and to build something that's a sort of unusual, but easy enough to make in the short time that's left. 3D-printing is all the rage now, and even buildings can be printed. There are many kinds of machinery for that, but to fit the contest rules I chose a type that moves on tracks and extends a printer arm for spraying the concrete in place. Something along these lines: I'm not going to attempt replicating the machine pictured above, but something similar with the same basic functionality. Here's what I've built so far: I intend to add at least outriggers and a knob for rotating the turntable. Not sure what else I can fit in, we'll see.

It's definitely not just you.