2GodBDGlory

It was pretty cool that you could do that! I believe there was also the possibility for remote control with the right Mindstorms accessories?

I was pretty skeptical too. I've designed a 1:7 supercar using Unimog tires, and as you say, a seemingly small scale difference ended up with a far larger model! I looked up 1:6 cars from that Taigaole brand @Satisfied mentioned, and found models of a Porsche 911, Mclaren W1, and Lamborghini Revuelto. After calculating scale for those cars, they came out as 1:6.8, 1:6.3, and 1:7.3, respectively. So they definitely seem to be exaggerating the scale, but at least in the W1's case, not by as much as I expected. (Though it could be their listed dimensions are wrong, the real-car dimensions I looked up are wrong, or the proportions are off in a way that maximizes length?) At any rate, those truly are massive, and it's interesting to see commercial takes on at least 1:7 supercars

I agree that the fact that your 12T gears aren't one one beam is your only shot to get them moving smoothly, so hopefully the tightness isn't too much of an issue! I still think it looks too complicated to be reliable, but it would be cool if you can get it working

Ah, my bad; thanks for the reminder! I've added a combined image now, using screenshots from my video

I always like to see gearboxes in development! This is a novel gear setup--interesting! I do wonder about how much gearing up you're seeing, though. Having a full 8x speed increase is a LOT, and I wouldn't be surprised if the motors stall very easily just trying to manage the friction of the gearbox while running at 1/8 of its torque. I also don't understand what the function of the cam-activated idler is, but I do worry about that 12T-12T meshing there. Those gears can kind of mesh in that spacing, but there's very high friction involved. I also agree with vascolp that connecting the shifting motor directly would make more sense and cut out a lot of complexity, though I'm not sure how that would interface with that idler mechanism (since I don't understand the purpose of the idler mechanism). Thanks for sharing!

I think the difference is that I'm thinking in the MOC world rather than the set world. I don't expect Lego to do anything more interesting with their cars than their motorcycles, but when we're talking MOCs, I think the upper limit on complexity is higher for cars than motorcycles, so I can always hope that when I see a new car MOC, it'll have more going on. I'm also not someone who really has much interest in building stuff to display, so I guess the MOCer in me just likes to see mechanical flights of fancy, even if they compromise other aspects of the model

I too have had terrible experience with half-beams with axle holes. I have so, so many broken ones. I haven't sorted them out, so I regularly pull out and reject 4+ broken ones before finding a good one to use. (Broken ones are fine for non-critical applications, at least)

Great job, as always!

That does sound disappointing! If you do decide to stop trying to make Rebrickable work as a business, I hope you're at least able to pivot to a building model that you find fun as a hobby, even if it means building your MOCs a little less optimized, or simplifying/eliminating the instructions. Whatever's fun for you! I know I wouldn't find that extreme level of optimization and instruction work to be a fun hobby, but it looks like you've got some great stuff in progress, so I hope you're able to finish it in whatever format works best for you

That's better than it could be! Hopefully that works for you. Were there any Vietnamese stores you used that would be entirely shut down?

Very little interest in this set--unless, of course, it has handy new parts!

Ha, gotta love browser extensions!

I like it! It looks compact and fast. I've got some nostalgia for that Race Kart set myself, so this is fun to see!

Wow, that's surprisingly complicated!

I'm not familiar with the mechanism, but it seems that it could easily be accomplished with a gear on a friction pin, or just having enough gears involved that they have enough friction on their own I'm not familiar with the mechanism, but it seems that it could easily be accomplished with a gear on a friction pin, or just having enough gears involved that they have enough friction on their own

After TC30 got me back in the Technic habit, I've been plugging away some more at this model. I've now got three L motors installed to drive the functions, and a servo motor to shift between different modes. So far all the installed functions (drive/steering, turntable rotation, front blade, and first boom segment) are working satisfactorily, so hopefully they all keep working under the model's full weight! There's a lot of complicated gearing going on, so there are a lot of potential failure points. I ended up having to use chain for a both the drivetrain from the servo to the shifter (probably a good solution), as well as from one of the L motors to the gearbox (a little scarier to have transmitting that torque), so hopefully that keeps holding up. I've also pivoted from the original contest-legal solution of using a 8878 rechargeable battery and two IR receivers, to using the much nicer MouldKing 6.0 battery. Furthermore, the more I look at the model, the more I feel like its proportions match a NORMAL excavator, rather than the MINI excavator I was planning on building. To do a proper mini, I'd have to push the cabin further back into the section occupied by the mechanicals, but everything should work fairly nicely with a normal excavator, so I think I'm going to move to that. It'll still have the front blade and the claw/thumb by the bucket, which aren't nearly as typical on full-size excavators, but probably exist somewhere? It feels like most of the challenging parts have come together, so hopefully I can have a finished model to present before too long!

Looks very impressive! This looks to me like the best LOTR set since Rivendell, with more impressive scale than The Shire, and less ugly source material than Barad-Dur. So it checks Faramir off the list of most-wanted minifigures, but we're still waiting on Eowyn?

I love that you're posting this stuff on Eurobricks! This whole Lego vacuum engine thing is quite foreign to me, and all the specialized terminology you're using just goes to show that it really is a whole world that I'm just getting a glimpse of through your posts! Your first sentence "I like OHV vacuum engines as much as the next guy" kind of cracked me up, just thinking about how virtually nobody has an opinion on vacuum engines, much less specifically OHV ones! It's super fun to see this stuff!

That is the most impressive Technic build I've seen in a long time! Very, very nice work! Great documentation, too

Very cool build! The action sounds very satisfying, and it's great to see the high splat gear usage!

Nice work, and thanks for the detailed writeup! I think all the generations look great--you've got really good use of colors and shaping on them!

Nice work! Both models look well-thought-out

I like the snowblower! And I wouldn't expect that System usage to be a problem. I've never taken it as a rule against using system parts; just that we're trying to avoid full-on System styled models

Good question! I wouldn't want to change too much, for fear of making it disproportional with the rest of the backhoe, but I might be able to make some slight tweaks. Maybe reducing the length of the roof to 6 studs instead of 7? Turns out that didn't work, since it would expose the 20T gear on the rear of the roof

All right, I think the truck is done! After finishing the frame of the cab, I was weighing in right at 300g, and I still had details I wanted to add, so I went on the weight-trimming program so many contestants here have been doing! In the end I was able to trim enough weight to add the LBG barrels under the doors, the door handles, and the exhaust stacks, though I ended up being unable to include any kind of seats. There wouldn't have been much room for them anyways, though, so it's probably not too great of a loss. Interestingly, although I had been leaning towards the street tires, switching them for the chunky tires ended up saving me ~9g, which ended up being the deciding factor! I do quite like the look with these as well, though. Anyways, I'll be going over these to see if there's any final things I want to adjust on them, and then taking some better pictures and video for the final entry!