2GodBDGlory

My car also has a throttle cable and a manual, and whenever I'm driving someone else's auto I'm annoyed at how often I have to use the brake pedal! It really is close to one-pedal driving a lot of the time

@Jim, I've got a rules question. Is water allowed in contest entries? I'm not sure if it will work, but I was thinking of trying to make hydraulic steering using Lego pneumatics and a peristaltic pump, if I can get it to work. Would the water for that be acceptable to use? (I've even got a good natured/far-fetched argument for water being a Lego element! Every Lego box includes lots of air, making air an official Lego product. Normal air contains humidity, including water! So theoretically my hydraulic system could be using purely water condensed from the air included in Lego sets!)

Depends what you mean by efficient, I guess! I just meant that the actual final gearbox looks mechanically efficient, with few gear meshes and low friction/backlash. Other types of efficiency are debatable

Yeah, for my personal purposes, I'm pretty happy with how Lego Technic has been going. I don't really buy sets, so I don't really care if they're mediocre or repetitive, but I do buy parts, and TLG has been very generous with the useful new molds lately!

Oh, I'm sure a more compact gearbox could have been made, but from my reading in the car world, Koenigsegg is really proud of their unique 6-clutch transmission, and presumably it was important to them that Lego represent it relatively accurately, which required a larger gearbox From a value perspective it's valid to point at a low gear count compared to the P1, but I don't know that it is from an engineering standpoint. From my count the other day, this 9-speed uses only 12 gears, which is amazingly efficient! By releasing new gear sizes, Lego was able to build a gearbox with far fewer gears than before, which may be poor consumer value, but definitely seems like an engineering/efficiency win

Looks nice! That was the second Technic set I bought, so it's rather nostalgic for me

Looking good so far! I like the use of more unusual suspension parts to get a slimmer axle

Though to be fair, there's also going to be a lot of new people on here. If I had to guess the number here would be trending downward, but maybe more because people are moving to social media than because people aren't building Technic. I think it's normal for people to take up the hobby for a few years, and then move on. This can be because they just lost interest after a while and moved to something else, or because their life got busier with added responsibilities, and they just don't have the time for it anymore. I don't think decreased set quality would be a primary factor. Honestly, poor modern sets don't seem to be hurting the casual fans who just build sets (as evidenced by high sales), and I don't see much reason that they would hurt the hardcore fans who just need parts for MOCing. Maybe there's a middle ground of people who would be hurt more by it? Or maybe mediocre sets prevent the transition from casual to hardcore fans in some cases?`

Thanks for the picture! That's what I'm most excited to see, so it definitely sates me for a while until the full review is ready Nice! Between that image and that video, I now feel like I understand how the gearbox works. Those shift drums do feel really specific, but I really like the gearbox design overall. The shifting logic is kept quite simple mechanically thanks to those drums, so there's no additional steppers engaging every full turn or something. Then the gearbox design itself, while huge, does look rather efficient. It looks like there's only three shafts being used for the 9-speed part of the transmission? And is it actually only twelve gears being used for the entire base 9-speed? That seems really low, and seems like it ought to make it run quite smoothly! Very cool stuff!

Thanks for the European stats! I'm lucky to have lived in small towns and small cities where you don't really get traffic jams, but on the occasions where I have driven down to the big city (Toronto), and hit traffic, I can understand how manuals could get annoying fast! Haha, nice! That's interesting that that's where you see them! That's exactly where you would least see them in Canada. Nobody wants to buy their company a vehicle that most of their employees can't drive, so the manuals stick to personal, enthusiast, vehicles.

Ok, so I guess that implies a 92%-8% split? That's a good method of looking into stats like that. On Kijiji.ca, I see 141,005 cars for sale in Canada, 3,813 of which are manuals, which would be a 97%-3% split

What would you say the auto/manual split is in Australia? I'd guess Canada/America would be something like 95%-5%, and I get the impression that Europe might be 75%-25%. I imagine Australia is somewhere in between. Do you think that's accurate?

Hooray! I've started some research and brainstorming on what I want to build, but I won't be able to start right away. Hopefully I'll be able to finish my current MOC tonight, after which I'll document and disassemble it, after which I can start. And wow, there's hardly any debate about the rules this time! Perks of making them really simple, I guess

Yeah, I'd say so! There are very few cars on sale today that I'd actually like to own, and even on those ones, I'm skeptical about the complexity and technology going into everything new. I'm also both cheap and a big lover of manual transmissions, but there's not a single economy car left in Canada offering a stick. (Maybe still one trim of the Mazda3, but I think it was/is a more expensive one). If I was forced to buy a new car, I don't think there's anything I'd be happy with in the price range I'd be looking in. Luckily my '95 Geo Tracker shows no signs of quitting, and even when it does there's still used cars I'd like from the pre-2020 era. Just not sure if I'll have any good options in 30 years

Thanks for the clean picture! It does seem like it's quite accurately representing the original transmission, which has six separate clutches for the forward gears (and one for reverse). The gearbox could probably have been made a fair bit more compact by using both ends of each driving ring, but using only one end is more accurate to the Koenigsegg original. Glad to see the authenticity even in gearbox construction!