2GodBDGlory

I don't think motorcycles use freewheels, though, so there's probably no real need to

Their lineup is pretty packed! The GX, J250, and 4Runner don't have much to distinguish them. The issue with moving the LX and Sequoia to a unibody platform is that there then isn't much distinguishing them from the TX and Grand Highlander... In Canada, for some reason, we never got the 100 or 200 series Land Cruisers, even though we got the Lexus LX all along, and the US always had the Land Cruiser as well. I don't really understand their thinking for that! I think the appeal of either the LC or the LX was always going to be fairly niche, for people who knew what it was, since the LX was never going to be as comfortable as the American or European luxury SUV competition, thanks to its off-road bones. But then instead of playing up its off-road capability, they took away the legendary Land Cruiser name, and started making the styling less and less off-road focused. I guess that situation is the same now in both the US and Canada, which is a shame. I am happy to see the GX leaning back into its off-road chassis, after having some pretty generic street-focused bodywork for a while

TC31 has been disappointingly quiet, with only four WIPs so far! Anyways, I've finally finished up some other projects, and am ready to start posting stuff for my entry, though I haven't made a ton of progress so far. So, my initial plan was very ambitious, including a remote controlled peristaltic pump running a Lego hydraulic system to run steering in a realistic way for this type of vehicle, and a three-speed gearbox using planetary gearing to simulate the real-life automatic-style transmission. However, my ambition appears to have been too great. I spent a while trying to get a pure Lego peristaltic pump working, but in the end the only design that worked for me at all was this very bulky one from Yoshihito Isogawa, and even it didn't give me acceptable pressure: This was rather disappointing, since I had had great success with 3D printed parts back in this topic: Anyways, I gave up on that idea and moved to the transmission. I built a working three-speed gearbox using two sets of planetary gears inside the 56T turntables, but the friction involved ended up being very high, and adding any significant load on the output would jam up the whole gearbox, so that idea was also ruled out! In the end, the plan is for the model to have more basic features, but in order to keep the difficulty level up, I'll be challenging myself to build everything as small as possible. The four motors are planned to be used for: 1. 4WD with a V8 piston engine (XL motor) 2. Shifting a traditional 3-speed transmission (Servo motor) 3. Steering the four wheels through linear actuators on the axles, and with a manual DNR gearbox to engage, disengage, or reverse steering the rear wheels for different steering modes (M motor) 4. Brakes with discs mounted in a realistic position between the universal joint and the input to the differential, using small pneumatic cylinders and an autovalve (M motor) On top of this there will be four-link suspension So, this is as far as I've gotten so far, with one axle about done, the DNR transmission for the steering, a partially built 3-speed, and the V8 The DNR transmission is based on a design I came up with years ago, I believe for my 1:7 Bugatti Chiron MOC. You slide the black 12T gear through three positions, where it either engages with the tan 20T gear, nothing, or the blue 20T gear (which is rotating backwards compared to the tan one, thanks to the tan 12T gears). This will be controlling rear axle steering, and thanks to the linear actuators on the axles, the steering position will remained locked even when the transmission is in neutral. The transmission is very rudimentary so far, and the final build will probably depend on the space I have available: The front axle is fairly densely built, and is as skinny as you can build a steered axle using these wheels, planetary hubs, and an O-framed differential. The brake just has this pneumatic cylinder pulling that curved liftarm against the disc, with a rubber track insert pressing directly against the disc. It's not going to be a particularly strong brake, I don't think, but it does have the advantage of being before the gear reduction in the planetary hubs, multiplying its effectiveness. I'm not really sure what the bodywork will look like at this point, but once the chassis is done I should at least have a better idea what proportions I'll be dealing with. Thanks for reading!

Toyota BOF stuff is really cool! Have you thought about the J250 Land Cruiser (Prado)? I'm not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, we finally get a Prado in Canada and the US! On the other hand, the Prado seems to have been conformed to our tastes to the point that it lacks the appeal of the older ones. No manual option, and maybe more styling for styling's sake.

I'm pretty sure this one is intentionally accurate, given how excited Koenigsegg has seemed to be about the specific gearbox design in that car. I'd expect the P1 one is also intentionally accurate, given that previous cars had simpler gearboxes that were less realistic, despite having similar gear counts

Just checked out your YouTube, and that is a really impressive project! I do love the combination of Lego, hobby RC, and 3D printing you've got going on there. Unfortunately it's probably not technically a contest-legal build, since the rules do specify that the build not use 3D printed or most other third party parts. Really fun stuff there, though!

A manual Tacoma with a cap, maybe? You can still get those new, at least

Huh, what's the purpose of the three balls on the side? Are they creating a surface for the bottom ball, in contact with the ground, to rotate on?

Ooh, that's a cool ride!

Hey, glad to see you back on here! It's a very clean looking truck, as usual, and I like the green!

Thanks! Yeah, the transverse build was a big priority. I guess those LAs do feel like a pretty heavy-duty solution for just headlights! They seemed to fit the available space the best, though. Cool, thanks! Thanks! Interesting that the Corolla was the "teen" car there. Over here I'd say the Civic has a huge advantage over the Corolla in teen appeal. Thanks! Yeah, I don't think I'd ever use a Torsen differential in a performance-oriented Lego model, since it's just too big and inefficient. And from your testing, perhaps not durable enough either! They are still fun to include on large-scale models that aren't really about performance, though, and do work

That's a nicely done model of a cool car! I do agree that the wheel arches seem to stick out much farther than necessary given the wheel position. Either having slimmer fender flares, wider tires, or both, seems like it would help the look a lot

I would have assumed it would just use existing rims with new hubcaps, but it kind of looks like they're new? You couldn't really use a tan frictionless axle+pin part on the front wheels with existing parts, and some of the pictures do make it look like the steering hubs are inside the wheel, so that could be cool! It would be a great wheel for trying to make compact suspensions at roughly this scale, but the actual design of the rim doesn't work for that many cars

Yeah, I think that's improved!

Oops! I edited that message to add it in

Oh, I hadn't realized the three-bladed aspect! That definitely adds complexity, even on top of the already fearsome challenges of the coaxial system! Yeah, probably best to not worry about it. For a look at what it takes to include cyclic, collective, and anti-torque in a coaxial system, I highly recommend checking out this MOC thread, with some amazing animations by @Blakbird! Much too big to be relevant here, but fascinating, and there's free instructions too!

Hey, that's a clever use of that black 3L part for the dump linkage! It's just that much smaller than the normal liftarm, which I imagine gives a little bit more travel on the bed

Ooh, very cool! Helicopters are awesome, and you seem to have a very good start on a very dramatic looking one! That landing gear is pretty delightful; great job! I hope to see this finished at some point! Did you consider adding working flight controls? To me that's usually the highlight of a helicopter MOC, but I reckon with all the added complexity of the coaxial rotor system, it would be completely prohibitive at this scale! I imagine you came to the same conclusion

If you believe the rules, yes, it is mandatory. If you believe past precedent, people do seem to get away with just dropping the model last-second, though!

Images are working for me in Canada. It does look like quite a nicely done model! I can't say I care much for the source material, but good work! I'm not sure I've seen that wheel/tire combo in use before, and I like it!

Ooh, congrats on finding the parts to make brown work!

So earlier this year I decided it was high time I actually build another 1:8 car MOC, which is a territory I used to build in an awful lot, but hadn't done for a while. I then looked back and found that the last proper 1:8 car I had designed was this Ford Mustang: Anyways, I wanted to build something with interesting mechanicals and a simple enough body to model. I was looking at sporty '90s Toyota Corolla models when I came across an image of this custom build: It's a 1989 Toyota Corolla GT-S owned by Randy Wimenta, and extensively modified to have AWD and a desert racing setup, which you can read more about here: https://www.treadmagazine.com/buyers-guide/awdrola-the-remarkable-transformation-of-a-toyota-corolla-gt-s-into-an-off-road-beast/ Anyways, it was a model of a car I was already interested in building, but with even more mechanical functions to emulate, and some great style! Aesthetics: I didn't have the white parts to build the car in the original color, but my trusty LBG looked about close enough. I used some red parts on the rear, and then finished the yellow, orange, and red stripes with electrical tape (and orange marker on labels for orange). I was pleased with the way the look turned out! I think it's way better than my old 1:8s, though not at the level of other more appearance-focused builders out there. The rims are some 3D printed "steelies" I had lying around from a Toyota LC70 trial truck project last summer. The license plates are 3D-printed as well, and are replicas of Idaho license plates. Why Idaho? I'm honestly not too sure. I think my criteria were that the location's plate look ok, have both front and rear plates, be a place I like, and have some level of desert for the car to drive in. Neither I nor the real car have any connection to that state, but that's what I did, for some reason. Functions: Opening doors, hood, and trunk AWD with 2x PF L motors and an I4 piston engine Steering with PF M motorAWDrola 6+R joystick manual transmission with 2x PF Servo motors and moving cabin joystick Clutch with PF M motor Central differential lock with PF M motor Pop-up headlights with PF M motor Rear pneumatic drum brakes with moving handbrake and PF M motor "Super Strut" front suspension 4-link live rear axle Torsen rear differential Opening Stuff: The doors opened with a fairly basic manual latch. The hood opened with a rudimentary strut. The trunk opened, and had quite a bit of space inside, but no way to keep it open Drive: A big priority for me was to have a fully transverse drivetrain (until getting into the rear axle driveshaft), just like the real car. The two L motors always drove the piston engine, followed by the clutch, transmission, and central diff lock. Planetary hubs were used on the wheels. Largely thanks to those, it was actually able to drive! Not fast, and both fifth and sixth gears were starting to get crunchy, but it did move! Steering: Steering ended up being hard to squeeze in after building the drivetrain, and had some issues. It was using a PF M motor through a small linear actuator, with a working steering wheel. Unfortunately, the small LA's clutch tended to kick in, so steering didn't work very well with weight on the car. It was never really something I was going to drive around, though, so I didn't mind too much. Transmission: This was definitely the highlight of the model for me! This car has a fully transverse 6+R transmission shifted through a realistic manual transmission joystick on the remote control, with a corresponding joystick moving around on the interior! The working principle uses two PF Servo motors, each shifting a separate transmission. The first shifts a 3+R transmission through gearing such that its natural 180° of motion create 270° of motion in a wave selector to shift through all four positions. This is controlled by left/right motion of a proportional joystick on my MouldKing 6.0 controller, allowing for it to land in all four of the acceptable positions. The second transmission is a close-range 2-speed, with 24:24 and 20:28 gearing to split in between the ratios of the 3+R. This one is controlled by a servo that just rotates 180 degrees, and is controlled by a PF IR remote clone connected to the remote control's joystick. Forward/reverse motion of the joystick shifts this into either the high or low gear, as in a 1-2 shift on a manual transmission car. You may notice that this isn't actually a 6+R, but rather a 6+2R! I didn't need the second reverse, though, so I'm ignoring it. Realistically the car should be a 5+R, but I couldn't think of a way to build that on this working principle, and from my research the original Toyota gearbox did have a 6-speed variant (used in some Lotuses, or something), so theoretically I think a real one could be built that way! As mentioned before, there is a moving joystick in the cabin, with transverse motion hooked up to one servo, and fore/aft motion hooked up to the other. I was really pleased with the gearbox! Clutch: The clutch was a pretty basic affair, with a PF M motor switching a transmission driving ring through a custom slip clutch, to disconnect the drive motors from the transmission. It didn't have any practical purpose, and wasn't the most reliable, but it was there, I guess Central Differential Lock: The central diff lock was run by another PF M motor, also tucked in the front, through another custom friction clutch. In the picture below (spoilered out), it shifts the driving ring on the right of the image. Behind it is the central differential, which has a 24T clutch gear permanently mated with its case through a driving ring. The one output of that central diff then drives the two DBG 24T gears, but if the right driving ring is engaged, the red 24T clutch gear and the DBG 24T gear on its axle are joined, forcing the case to rotate at the same speed as its output, locking it. I was rather pleased to have this string of three 24T clutch gears, all being used to mate with driving rings! (The left one is part of the 2-speed transmission, with the other side of it driving the central diff through its 28T side) Pop-up Headlights: Everyone loves pop-up headlights! The ones on this car were flipped up and down using a PF M motor running a rubber band, which then drove an axle with two small linear actuators on it. These were tucked just below the hood and just above the rims, but worked pretty well to raise and lower the lights! Unfortunately I didn't bother to work in any LEDs. Brakes: I wanted to have some kind of brakes, but I didn't think adding front ones would be realistic. In the end I decided to just simulate the parking brake operation, with two small pneumatic cylinders mounted on the rear axle to press rubber parts against some drums. These were mounted inboard of the planetary hubs, so they could take advantage of the gear reduction to have more powerful braking! They were controlled by a PF M motor under the trunk running a pneumatic autovalve/compressor, with the motor's rotation direction determining which way the valve opened. There was a third pneumatic cylinder to move the parking brake lever up and down. Super Strut Front Suspension: In doing research on Toyota's of this generation, I came across an interesting Toyota suspension design, called "Super Strut" suspension. It's a variant of a MacPherson strut, designed with more of a focus on handling. I'm not sure if a stock '89 Corolla GT-S like this one would have had it, and I'm pretty sure this real-world custom build was using Rav4 MacPherson struts, but I wanted to add this more interesting design: Just like the real one, I had two bottom links (creating a bit of a virtual pivot), a ball joint connected to the strut, and the extra camber control link connecting the strut to the transverse suspension link. It used two 9.5L hard shocks per side, tilted on an angle, and had pretty decent travel. It wasn't the most durable suspension, but I'd rather it be interesting than durable! I'm also not sure I could have fit a traditional double-wishbone setup with the transmission, so doing some strut type was rather beneficial. Rear 4-link Floating Axle Suspension: The rear axle was a relatively basic solid axle with a triangulated 4-link setup. (The real custom car was using the rear axle from a Toyota Corolla All-Trac Wagon, which had a solid axle, unlike other Corolla variants) I had two soft 9.5L shocks per side, but one per side was using a little 3D-printed clip that precompressed the spring to be close to the hardness of a hard shock (because I had run out of hard shocks). This suspension was simple and reliable! Torsen Rear Differential: The rear differential had a limited-slip Torsen-style differential. It really wasn't needed for performance, but I like Torsens, and I had room to put one in! This isn't my design--I can't remember where I first saw it, though. I was rather pleased that I was able to use these curved Bionicleish parts to trace out the front and rear of the axle, sort of like a real car's differential carrier! Other Notes: Another thing I challenged myself to do was to make the A, B, and C pillars structural, which I was fairly successful in doing! The A pillars would pop out of the roof, but the B and C ones were quite strong, and I could lift it by the rear of the roof, with no roof supports other than those six pillars! The electrical setup was nine motors on eight channels, powered by the six channels of a MouldKing 6.0 battery, and a clone 2.4 GHz PF "IR" receiver run off that same battery I was quite pleased with the model! I liked the looks, and it had a lot of fun and interesting functions to engineer, which worked fairly well! I don't know when I'll build my next 1:8 car, but it was a lot of fun to get back to the genre with more developed skills and a modern parts inventory! More images at: https://bricksafe.com/pages/2GodBDGlory/awdrola

Though just because they don't have the parts on Bricks & Pieces doesn't mean that they're not going to use them again. I wouldn't write off seeing other pneumatic components return at some point

Right, I had to eat that last time I sold a set to the US from Bricklink! Anyways, we should get back on topic...

Yeah, I think the best bet in North America might just be buying from European Bricklink sellers, who usually seem to be cheaper--perhaps because of their bigger discounts? That only really works on bigger sets where the shipping can be amortized, and maybe works better when you don't care if it's used or not?