howitzer

If you turn the string around itself, you might find another loophole! --- On another note, we really need a re-release of the air tank, the old ones are getting expensive and pneumatic sets like this could be so much more with them...

So... basically stacking bushes until the tolerance accumulation takes care of your offset?

This reminds me of the very fond memories from my childhood with 8868: Specifically those pneumatic hoses routed through the turntable. A definite buy for me as soon as it's available through my local retailers.

Does anyone know a way to create a quarter stud offset? Ideally a spacer (like bush or something) but other methods can also be considered. I know such an offset could easily be created by placing bushes and aligning them carefully on an axle, but those are prone to unintentional sliding, and I'm wondering if anyone has come with a better method...

Considering that the promo pic makes an attempt to impress us with its climbing ability, I think 2 motors for drive are a good bet.

Is this the first Technic car set with 4 openable doors? The front grille + headlights made solely with stickers isn't that great design, but otherwise it looks quite nice. Also, a nice selection of orange parts, even a couple of recoloured panels. No mention of a gearbox though, so I assume none is included, just the basic steering, V6 engine and suspension as far as functions go. Hopefully at least the steering wheel is connected to the steering. The HOG wheel looks indeed pretty ugly, but apparently it's easy to remove and reattach, so it's not a problem.

It has and entirely studful chassis, and the bodywork uses mostly flexible axles to achieve the looks, while today panels play much bigger role in styling, so I'd say there's more than enough to change for a proper modernization. I'm very curious also to see what this will become.

As minor as it is for a cosmetic detail, hopefully you find a way to fix it, as the cutouts for pinholes detract from the original look a bit. Otherwise, great work so far!

Seconded. The more angular look of the one on the right feels more correct, and considering it's a buggy used probably in zero atmosphere environment, it doesn't need to be aerodynamic at all, so the curved panel style feels a bit wrong.

Shouldn't the curved panel on the hood be swapped to one with less pinholes? I mean, there's no apparent structural need to use the 10 hole variant, so why not the other one?

Nicely done, very true to the original!

My thoughts exactly. No matter how great the set might be, there's no way it will justify the price - and even if it did, it's still far outside of what I'm willing to pay.

Akiyuki Kawaguchi did a somewhat similar experiment, though with 32L axles and about non-permanent twisting: All this work to find out about the ways around the limitations and shortcomings of Lego is very interesting, so kudos to you and others for doing the experimentation and sharing the results!

Great work so far! Something I feel should be somehow replicated is the many unconventionally angled bricks of the original. They add significantly to the futuristic and unconventional look of the vehicle, so I feel that simple paneling won't cut it. Your interpretation of the front fenders and front of the cabin is a good start for this.

There are a lot of things which can cause issues with the gearboxes, like carelessness during construction, misalignment of U-joints, the tan bevel gears (which caused a lot of discussion at some point), bent axles, dust collection and probably many other things. Each of them might be small and not problematic on their own but the thing is that they compound each other, and very soon you'll have a gearbox that just doesn't work. So while simpler models work well with no problem, with complex gearboxes it gets to a point where no amount of fiddling will help the issue and most people won't even try proper fixes and just abandon the model as a dust collector on the shelf or take it apart. Proper bearings and better gearbox elements would solve a lot of these issues but somehow I don't see TLG being interested in investing into these (especially the bearings) so we're stuck with the parts we have, and sometimes issues can be fixed with clever design and careful construction, and sometimes not. The defender is a cool model, but the gearbox is just too complex to work properly with the possibility of all these issues appearing.

Considering it's a known issue with no solution in sight, even one request is useless, if you want anything else than just more of the same, flawed parts. I'm sure TLG is aware of the issue, and now it's up to them to fix it (or not, if they think it's not serious enough issue to warrant a fix).

Indeed. And if you insist on keeping the 4-speed gearbox, you could always simply have the changeover catch slide on axle for various positions, it's not hard to do. It might be harder to do it like the original, which had the stick pivoting with a ball-joint though...

I just bought 42114 for 145€. New but damaged outer packaging so got a nice discount. Gotta be extra careful with checking that all the parts are there though...

Well, you could always enlarge the model if high parts count is what you need. I recall seeing a grader MOC with well over 4000 parts and extremely high level of functionality, I think having all the functions that a real grader would have. And considering the hugeness of the Liebherr and the upcoming CAT, there's no reason why it couldn't be equally large (though I'm sure somewhat smaller would suffice, not every flagship has to be huge).

A grader is indeed at least as exciting as a bulldozer, and we've had several of the latter over the years but never a proper grader. It's very high on my wishlist also, and judging from the several magnificent grader MOCs I've seen over the years, it could either be a really cool flagship set or a secondary yet still very nice and functional set. Kinda like the CAT bulldozer/American tow truck.

Ok, thanks for the explanation. Rules lawyering is an inevitable part of any kind of competition (at least if there's prizes involved), but I think it's still pretty civil in here. And the most important rule still is to have fun!

Your entry is one of the more interesting ones in the contest, and in my opinion a great interpretation of the contest theme. Especially your minifig build is well within the spirit of the contest in the way I interpret it. I don't understand, could you please rephrase this?

My interpretation of the spirit of the contest is that, you should stay as true to the original as possible in the sense that you shouldn't be making a much larger model with many added functions just because it's possible. Instead, you should reimagine the set as a Technic set, with the functions normally expected if such a set was made today into an official Technic set, and make it as close to the original scale as possible while keeping those functions around. With old 4-stud wide System vehicles, this means making a significantly larger model as it's just not possible to make a Technic model in such a scale but that's OK considering the source material. And yeah, even more important is to have fun with the contest. I certainly have had fun, and it appears that the same applies to many others, there are many great entries.

Yeah, what syclone and msk6003 said. It's the black splat gear.

Ah, the linked catalog has a better photo of the truck, and the mystery "piece" below the cabin door is actually just a series of liftarms with one dimension of 2, so no air tanks or similar there. Shame, but it still appears to be a great model by all accounts.