2GodBDGlory

Yeah, I agree that the friction of the wheels is a major factor. In my experience (and demonstrated a bit at the end of the video) is that simply driving forwards and backwards a little causes the tension to be released and the wheels to be moved in. I think the rationale for this is at least related to the fact that steering a car is always easier when moving. Thanks! I didn't manage to get the battery ordered last night, so it may arrive on Tuesday instead. Oh well, it's not too long. [EDIT] Rats, it'll be Wednesday!

Yeah, it'll be tonight... Here is my (hopefully) final update on this MOC, with a video of an informal test. As mentioned earlier, I'm going to need to get a Lithium rechargeable 9V battery to actually run this thing without an external power supply, so I'll wait for that to arrive before I do my final presentation, but otherwise this model could/should be done. Since the last update, I've checked off a bunch of little things. These are: 1. Added steering M-motor. This took a few iterations because of the tight space, but I got it working eventually. 2. Added PF receivers. This is always annoying! 3. Hooked up the rudders. You can't really see the mechanism well in the pictures, but I essentially hooked up two preexisting axles attached to the top of the steering pivots (so that they slide fore and aft when the model steers) to 2L beams connected to the rudders through some tortuous connections. In the end it works, but the axles tend to disconnect at the front, and are hindered by slack. I also hadn't thought about the direction they would go, assuming they'd go the same direction as the wheels for a crab-esque steering. In the end it turned out to be the other way, and it would have been challenging to change, so I kept a more 4WS-esque setup with "counter-steering." I imagine the crab-style would work better on a real vehicle because it is better for stability at high speeds, and aerodynamics is much more important at high speeds, but I think this is alright. 4. Added a basic lever for the flaperons. 5. Hooked up the piston engine to the drivetrain. This required significant reworking of the drivetrain, but it ended up being stronger in the end, so it was a double win. It used a bizarre geartrain of 20:12:16:8 to fit in the given space, with all but the 16T gear being at a half-stud offset from the main chassis. I rather doubt this setup has ever been used in a MOC before! 6. Redesigned the rear extendable driveshafts. My original extending driveshafts based on 24T gears kept catching on stuff, so I looked for something smaller. Zetros CV joints would work great, but I don't got 'em. My solution was to work the light bluish grey half of 6.5L shock absorbers into the shaft, and I am quite pleased with the solution. 7. Tweaked stuff! To get the transformation to work better, I tweaked a bunch of stuff. I increased torque on the transformation by swapping the 1:1 XL motor for a 1:3 L motor, made the roof skinnier to ease its transformation, and did some other little things to improve reliability. 8. Added stickers. I put together some custom stickers using the "LBG" sample color from some online Lego color guide with real Superbird decals superimposed over them. The color is a bit off, but I think it adds some nice authenticity. I got five stickers, one on the nose, two on the rudders/wing, and two above the rear wheels. Anyways, here's my first video of the model. It's nothing fancy, just me giving the model a try powered from an external Lego rechargeable battery.

Ok, it turns out that my hopes of fitting the rechargeable battery box were in vain. It can't fit without drastic changes, so I'm going back to plan B of buying lithium 9V batteries. I'll plan on ordering them tonight with projected arrival on Monday, after which I can make my final presentation. In the meantime, I'll probably add a final progress post with a video--tonight or tomorrow, I expect.

Possibly! I'm definitely excited to get my hands on some of these parts. Obviously the wheels are nice and open up new possibilities, but I think the rear shock could be a lot of fun to use as well. A harder spring like it could be very useful, but I hope its size doesn't limit its use too much. The front shocks don't seem to have many applications other than the forks of very large motorcycles, but are still very cool. The hub parts again look quite specialized, but I see them as a very interesting option for MacPherson strut suspensions on cars. Simply slot a 6.5L shock into the slot upside-down and the trickiest part is done! The lower ball joint could be annoying to attach, though, and you couldn't set any kingpin inclination without also adding camber. I still wonder how it would work there. The brake discs and windshield don't excite me as much, but are obviously high quality.

Hmm, thanks for the tip! I actually did redesign that part because the teeth kept catching on stuff. Now I'm using a setup based on the grey halves of small shocks, and it's working pretty well so far. I may look into that suggestion, though! Really what I need is the extending CV joint from the Zetros...

Thanks! I probably would have started the WIP with a lot less if I hadn't started so early (kind of by accident.) As for the end result, here's my mini-update: I got everything tuned up and installed since my last update, and was going to film it last night. I had never tested it with my alkaline 9V battery because I knew that I'd never had much success with them in the past, and assumed that I'd need full charge if it was going to work. It didn't. It worked alright with my transformer and lithium batteries, but not this one. I was distressed for a bit, and eventually decided to order a lithium 9V battery from Amazon, which would likely give me the torque I need in the right form factor. However, I don't like spending money, I don't want to wait for it to arrive, and using a long-retired battery is kind of bad form anyways, so I didn't really want to do it. This morning I was thinking some more, and I think I might be able to squeeze in my PF rechargeable battery at the cost of some ground clearance, but I'll have to see. After that, I should be ready to do my final documentation and share the results!

I tried motorizing the Ducati, but didn't come close, though I've build a few standalone RC bikes of my own. I think my main issues were the high center of gravity and the difficulty of keeping it correctly balanced. I mean, there were probably lots of other mistakes that could be avoided, but I expect motorizing a set this large and getting it to balance would be a major challenge!

Yeah! This has been a great few months for LBG panels, with the 3x7x2 curved ones in the Raptor (and here), the 11x5 tapering one here, and those #1/2 ones here. Now the "only" key panels missing are all the large wheel covers, the new 71682, 18944, #3/4, the 7x3 panel, and the 11x3 panel. It'd also be nice to have the #5/6 and #17/18 appear in a set other than 2010's Hero Factory Drop Ship. I think I make life unnecessarily hard by building in this color...

Yep! I guess we're counting on it!

Quite possibly! I guess the question comes down to how well they match with buggy motor torque/speed without any gearing. After all, the main advantage of larger tires is that you can get a higher speed without inefficient gearing up, so I hope these aren't too large and require inefficient gearing down. Probably people would just stack a bunch of buggy motors to get torque, though.

Ah, in the BMW I assume? I guess that's the only new set revealed today...

Where, where!! (LBG panels make me excited)

You're correct that that connection would be illegal by Lego's standards, but the contest rules aren't concerned with this kind of thing (I'm pretty sure!), and I'm not concerned about any wear it could cause. Incidentally, though, that connection has been changed for my next update, but for unrelated reasons.

And Rimac's are single-speed electrics (I'm pretty sure they're single-speed, I'll say at most a two-speed), which would make for a very boring model mechanically. I certainly hope Lego doesn't plan to remove transmissions from their 1:8 supercars anytime soon! That's about all the complexity they've got!

Looks good! It seems both simple and tough at once, which is good!

Thanks guys! You're right that the "plane" mode could stand to look more like a plane. My model is in a bit of a middle ground between a "flying car" and an actual airplane, but I'm thinking that going beyond this would necessarily be even more prohibitively complicated than this already is! It would be a good ideal to aim for, though.

Would it be possible/good looking to raise the stickered cheese slope as well? You'd have to disconnect it from the lime 1x2 curved slope, but I imagine it could look a lot better.

Looks pretty good! I don't mind the black bed--it just gives me the idea of a cheap DIY guy replacing a rusted-out bed with the cheapest available one, which I always think looks kind of cool. Do the medium angular motors not work with the Technic hub?

Wow, that's very distinctive! It's cool to see the white, the four-door conversion is interesting, and the rarer shocks are cool too. Also, I'm excited to finally see a car built with the wide motorcycle tires! I can't say this is the style of Defender I'd want in real life, though...

I'll PM him and hopefully end this discussion

Can we get a pullback BMW?

I wonder what it would be like to design a car with those 60+ panel designs at your disposal!

In my mind, front-engine is integral to the Mustang. Come to think of it, though, I think I have a calendar with some weird concept Mustang (current generation) that rather looks like it's got a rear-mid-engine... [EDIT] I just searched for mid-engined Mustang concepts and didn't see that one, so presumably it still had a front engine. Really all I found was fan renderings, custom built cars, and some '60s concepts.

Oh, cool! I'm obviously not familiar enough with Bionicle parts!

I'm pretty happy with the progress I've made since the last update! I have: 1. Installed a battery. Space is tighter than I was expecting, so I was forced to use an old 9V train battery (and go buy a 9V battery!) under the floor. In order to hook it up to PF receivers, I'll use an old trick and run one from an output, and then run the second one from on top of that, avoiding the normal incompatibility at the cost of one port. 2. Installed a drive motor. Again, space was tight, so I could only fit a PF M-motor. It runs two long shafts on universal/CV joints with extending segments to reach both rear wheels. I had always planned on using a differential, but in the end I didn't have space. I also forgot about hooking it up to the micro piston engine, so I'll have to take a look at it later. 3. Installed the transformation motor. I had planned on using a PF L-motor, but it didn't have enough torque, and I lacked space for gearing, so I used an Xl instead. It seems to be struggling now, so perhaps some kind of modification is in order. 4. Tweaked the jet-engine deployment. Although the Defender rim looked good, it was too large to work reliably, and got jammed regularly, so I changed it to a Racing Small rim. I changed the mounting point of the cover, and added a small rubber band to make it easier for the engine to push the cover up. I also changed the linear clutch in this mechanism to a ball-joint design I shared yesterday in the General Technic Discussion thread. 5. Added the central section of the roof and its lowering ability. A 3L pin with the axlehole is used to make a linear clutch here, allowing two 2L beams to use linkages to pull the roof down a single stud to get it out of the way when contracting, and to get it back to normal height when expanding. One issue here is that when the Xl is turned off after reaching the end of its travel and stalling, it unwinds itself a little once power is shut off, which often lowers the roof back down. Using the speed control remote, however, seems to mitigate this. 6. Built the sides of the body. This section was very easy to do, and lacks really any detail. I had held off on installing it to keep access to the inside easy, but I decided to put it in now, making it look much more complete. 7. Redesigned the sides of the wing. Originally, I had the sides of the wing fixed upright and the top part sliding freely when contracting. This kept binding up, however, because the linear actuators were too far below the wing and thus didn't pull it straight. To avoid this, I have now fixed the top of sides to the wing with a hinge, and hinged them at the bottom, causing to to go from an | | shape to a \ /. This did mean that I had to sacrifice the elevator that was going to be built in to the wing, but I was doubtful that I'd be able to hook it up to anything at this point, so it was somewhat inevitable. I think I'll be able to keep the rudders, though. I'm reaching the home stretch on this model, I think, with only a few things left to do! These are: 1. Install the steering motor 2. Install the receivers 3. Design some control mechanism for the flaperons. 4. Hook the rudders up to the steering. 5. Hook the piston engine up to the drivetrain 6. Increase the ground clearance at the rear spring mount 7. Decrease the length of the flaperons so they don't collide with the body 8. Make adjustments to many parts of the transformation mechanism for greater smoothness and reliability