howitzer

I actually entertained the idea of building this briefly, as I have a friend who has this set and I could've borrowed it to check out the details. In the end I settled for another model and I don't have enough red parts for a proper reconstruction anyway, though.

The colour discussion in the Raptor topic got me thinking: I see a lot of Kobelco excavators around the construction sites and they are usually dark turquoise, so it might be nice to get such an excavator, maybe even licensed, at some point. It's a nice colour, but currently with very limited parts palette, though it has been used in other themes like Mindstorms before so some important parts do exist.

Yep, yellow would be a great for a car set, but I believe TLG wants to have variety of colours available each year, and as construction equipment is released quite often, it gets to have the yellow colouring, being the most recognizable colour for that category of machinery while cars can basically be of any colour. But this is getting off-topic, let's get back to the set this topic is actually about.

B-models are not A-models, I'm never going to buy a set (especially a large, expensive one) just because it has a nice B-model and I think many people agree with me. I love the extra that they bring on board though, as it gives something to do with the set once the A-model's shelf life is over, before parting it out. There's a large number of great B-models out there, but all of them would've been even better as a proper A-model, without the compromises that inevitably happen with B-models, so still not counting them when thinking of what kinds of things has or hasn't been properly represented in Technic. And yeah, 8479 and 8868B are not what I think as a refuse truck either.

I don't count B-models here. All kinds of strange contraptions have been explored with B-models in the past but due to the inherent limitation of limited and non-optimized parts selection, they just don't do it for me. And then there's the fact that B-models are being phased out, we've been seeing less and less of them in the last years. Don't get me wrong, I love B-models, but I don't think they have ever been a significant selling point, the main model is the real thing here. I hope you're right. It's true that the Technic lineup would benefit of exploring wider variety of trucks, in addition to the ever repeating dumper/crane/tow-trucks.

Would be great to have one of these. But I don't think there has ever been a proper refuse truck in Technic (42024's container might count but even that's quite different) so I believe the marketing people at TLG don't think very highly of them. Even if it could easily be a really great set.

Only panels 17 and 18 exist currently in sand blue. As for the thick liftarms, only 7L exists in sand blue. So the current parts palette is as good as nonexistent.

Don't forget the 5x11 panels in dark blue that were introduced with the limited edition 41999 Crawler. Technically available, but in practice expensive to the point of being unusable, at least until the release of the Cement truck last year. So yeah, I'd much rather take expansions to the existing colours (like dark blue and dark purple) than a completely new colour like sand blue.

It's a nice colour but never used in Technic, so I have no desire to see another colour that is near-useless in MOCing, at least for years and years to come. I contemplated buying the Defender for a long time, but in the end I decided not to get it due to the new colour scheme, which makes it very hard to use those parts in MOCs. 2019 was only two years ago, so not that long. Usually it can take 5 or even 10 years for a new colour to have wide variety of parts, which is why I don't wish to see completely new colour schemes. And yeah, the Osprey thing is an annoying one, but hopefully a one-time incident and not something that'll ever repeat. And hopefully we'll get these parts and more in other sets in the future. --- It would be nice to have some kind of tool to see which colours have a wide enough parts palette to be usable. A while ago I made the spreadsheet of panels, but there are a lot of other parts to consider, most notably liftarms and certain connectors.

LBG would probably look pretty boring as the colour just isn't striking enough to make for a good display, and the necessary parts don't exist in any of the silvery colours, so they would have to create an entirely new set of elements for a gray/silver car. Normal blue or even dark blue would probably work though. But on the other hand, it's nice to see a pre-existing colour with an parts palette expanding.

The mudguard parts have always been printed because of the shape, which prevents smooth application of stickers. So I'm fully expecting a print here also.

Quite expensive considering the parts count, but otherwise looks nice. Hopefully there'll be also some recolours in orange.

Motorized 4x4's tend to have separate motors for each axle, so no need for centre diff, while manual models don't usually stress parts enough to require a centre diff (though it's sometimes included for the sake of functionality).

So, I made an order to B&P. They promised a delivery time of at least 5 weeks, but the order arrived today, after just over 2 weeks. And I got 2 extra of 71682 in yellow. I also ordered the new panel extenders, and yeah, the alignment issues with the axlehole are strongly present: I arranged them so the differences would be apparent, 2x4 beams for reference. Curiously, the black parts seem to be divided into two categories with misalignment to opposite directions, while the yellow ones have much more variation. None of the black and maybe one of the yellow ones align correctly though. I wonder if I should contact customer service about this?

Nice progress, the suspension setup is awesome! Why the blue seats though? The original had light gray seats so LBG would be more fitting I think. The side panelwork is somewhat different from the original, which had mostly horizontal lines, while yours are more vertical, I wonder if something could be done about that?

Correct. Conversion cables might be found somewhere in the Internet, but Buwizz offers more power also, so that's why I'm interested in getting it. And of course it would be useful also for other types of builds. Thanks for the info!

Yeah, the train controller can't power PU motors and it's maximum power is pretty limited anyway, so that's why I'm interested in Buwizz, as sometimes it would be nice to have a high power source that can keep on running for a long time.

I'm seriously interested in Buwizz 3.0, but something I didn't see answered in the website and I'm not sure if anyone has asked it before here (don't care to go through all the 36 pages of discussion): Can the device be charged while using it? Could it be used as a sort of indefinitely running power source like the old train controller which connects to the wall socket? If I leave it on and it charges to full while draining, will the charging resume when the battery is low again? Or will this kind of usage shorten the battery lifetime considerably or overheat the circuitry or something destructive like that?

This doesn't happen often, but I think this build would really benefit from stickers! Easier said than done of course...

Wow, this is incredible! Making the machine looping with a chain disassembler would be great, and also adding a part loader which orients and inserts the parts correctly from a pile.

Very nice. It would be great to see side-by-side comparison once the set has been released and thoroughly analyzed and see how much of your reverse-engineering was correct.

Yes, there's a manual pump behind the cabin, missing from Void_S's rendreing. It can bee seen in the side view photo in the picture posted earlier in this thread.

Yeah, but we're rebuilding these sets into Technic, so such a set would definitely include a fake engine.

You should definitely go with odd width. The original had a fake engine, it just wasn't connected to the wheels, so adding a drivetrain and fake engine that actually moves would be a feature this sort of set would include if it were released today. So yeah, put a proper fake engine in there.

Glad to see this model being built! I was deeply into my years of darkness when this came out but since coming back to Lego I've admired it a lot. What about the air tanks, are you going to use the original ones or find some other way to provide enough air for the functions?