2GodBDGlory

I'm really not interested in this set. I was able to respect the Charger and Raptor for their suspension and modeling of legitimately cool real-world cars. This one not only seemingly loses the suspension, but also the real-car aspect (I'm not a Batman fan). I do like the black wheel covers, though!

If so, I'd just write it off as a preproduction picture using them--I do not expect that the actual set will have the old design.

Is it just me, or are the ones in the picture the old-school design with the slits in the sides?

Very nice! These additions make the set much more like it "should" have been. Do you think you'd have room to add a central differential lock, as per the real truck?

Thanks for the pictures! It's pretty cool to see someone else enjoying it, and to see a copy with an actual spine!

Here is the fifth and final version of this truck: It is a shortbed, 4x4 F-100 with a focus on functionality over performance. The biggest standouts among the functions are in the drivetrain, which includes an RC clutch, a 4+R RC manual transmission, and manual disconnecting front hubs, as well as the unusual Twin Traction Beam front suspension. Features: Aesthetic: It looks essentially just like my previous F-Series MOCs, which is good enough for me. Unlike other ones, the body could easily be removed! Opening stuff: The hood, doors, and tailgate open Interior: The interior is fairly detailed, and includes an opening glove box, a working steering wheel, and a gearstick that moves along with the joystick on the remote control Suspension: The rear suspension is a simple leaf-sprung live axle, and though it was a touch soft, it was nicely responsive. The front suspension is the unusual Twin Traction beam design, used on light-duty 4x4 Ford trucks in the '80s and '90s (Maybe a little into the '00s too). It has a long beam connected to each wheel with a pivot point on the far side of the center of the truck. A differential is incorporated into one of the beams, and transfers drive to the other beam through a CV joint. Because of space constraints, I wasn't able to put the shock absorbers in the ideal places, so while the suspension worked, it had more friction than I would have liked. Manual Locking Hubs: This is one of two functions in the truck that were new to me, and was quite satisfying! Real 4x4s generally have RWD/4WD transfer cases, with RWD being used on pavement. This prevents the driveshafts from winding up because of the lack of a center differential, but it doesn't greatly improve efficiency, because the front differential and driveshaft is still turning, because the front wheels are driving it. To gain efficiency and reduce wear, many older 4x4s used manual locking hubs on the front wheels, so that by manually rotating a knob, the front wheels could be disconnected from their axleshafts. Thus, the front driveshaft and differential would not be moving at all. (Such systems have fallen out of favor because of the inconvenience of manually locking hubs. Other solutions have been used since, but I think these are the coolest!) My solution to model this was to mount the wheel to a small turntable, and then have it driven by an axle through the center. Pushing in the axle caused it to mate with the male end of an old CV joint used for steering, while pulling it out disconnected the hub. The system worked pretty well, except that the wheels continually fell off, because the clutch power of two friction pins (even with bars stuck inside of them) was insufficient to hold them on for long. Still, I loved having this extra level of control over the drivetrain. Drive: There was four-wheel drive with two XL motors, and a V8 piston engine was also driven. It drove in all gears, though it struggled somewhat in the higher ones. Steering: Steering a Twin Traction Beam axle can be tricky, and this was reflected in the high slack in my system. It used two main links, a linear actuator, a lever, and a PF M-motor, and also drove the steering wheel. There was castor and kingpin inclination, but no Ackermann geometry. Transfer case: Another PF M-motor shifted the transfer case through 2H, 4H, and 4L. I even got to use an axle as a gear to drive a 12T gear for the first time in a MOC! Clutch: A PF Servo motor flipped a wave selector through a 20:14 ratio to disengage the drive motors from the transmission. Additionally, a 12:36 ratio allowed it to simultaneously flip a switch on. This switch powered a receiver (a 2.4 GHz Chinese one) hidden under the floor, which controlled the two servos used for the transmission. Because of this, the transmission was inoperative unless the clutch was disengaged. Now, a few of you may be wondering how I managed to turn off the receiver. Usually, a receiver runs on the two constant power wires in the PF system, which are not affected by switches at all. What I did was complicated, but it worked. I attached a 20Cm PF extension wire to the battery, attached a 2x4 9V plate to it, and then attached another PF extension wire to that. This brief foray into 9V-land served to entirely wipe out the two constant-power wires (This is why receivers don't work on old 9V batteries). Then I hooked up the extension wire to the switch, which then was able to completely stop all current past it. Then, I used two tiny pieces of aluminum foil pressed between the switch output and the receiver wire to bring power back to the constant power lines by way of the motor wire contacts. (Sort of like how some people would run receivers off 9V battery boxes). I had to be careful that the current couldn't be reversed, but it worked flawlessly once I got it set up. It allowed me to do some cool things. For one thing, after selecting, say, second gear, I could release the clutch, and then move the shifting joystick on the remote back to the center without affecting the model. This allows me to save remote batteries by not having the shifting remote sending commands the whole time. Perhaps even cooler, I could preselect gears opposite of the one it was in! If I were in first with the clutch engaged, I could put the stick on my remote into the second position, then disengage the clutch, and watch it automatically carry out the shift as the receiver came back online! Gearbox: The gearbox was a very similar design to the 5+R (R after 5th) designs used in my 9th-Gen F-150 and my Fox-body Mustang, but with a few changes to improve efficiency and a 16T clutch gear put on backwards to prevent fifth from being engaged, making it a 4+R like the real truck. This transmission is unusual in that it really only works well in one direction in half of the gears because of a certain gear meshing (one way, they push into each other, while the other way they push apart). Fortunately, there is a reverse gear, so this can just be seen as an excuse to work the gears more and actually use it! Also, I came up with the medium-friction axle extender setup I shared with @npicard recently over in the Generic Building Help topic, keeping the driving rings from drifting into gear as they would with the smooth 3L extenders, while allowing the shifting motors to fully disengage gears without worrying about the resistance of the ridged 3L extenders. Anyways, the shifting itself was also improved over the previous designs to minimize interior intrusion. One Servo motor ran a 12T single-bevel gear against a 36T gear that then moved the gearstick from side to side, while another Servo motor ran a linkage under the floor to move the stick forwards and backwards. With a joystick on the remote, this made for convenient and realistic control. I think stick-shift cars in real life are really cool, but over here in Canada they are quite rare! I've only gotten to drive one a couple times off-road in a Jeep YJ, since I can't yet afford a car of my own (well, really it's the insurance I can't afford...). Models like this help me get a bit of that mechanical involvement in a (much) cheaper package. Overall, I was very pleased with this model! I think it may be the first car I've built with a legitimately strong frame, it looked fair, it drove reliably, and it had a very complex and cool drivetrain. More images: https://bricksafe.com/pages/2GodBDGlory/ford-f-series-7th-gen

I agree with you that the Chinese are no worse Europeans or Americans in that many people from all these countries don't care about morals so long as they make money (Us Canadians, though, are perfect. ), but I find it hard to believe that their government is really making "great efforts to put a handle on" it. After all, my understanding is that they are one of the most powerful governments, with among the most control over the economy of any country in the world today. I think it's more likely that the government claims to hate the knock-offs, but makes no effort to stop them, allowing the natural human impulse to take the "route of least resistance" to flourish in knock-offs. I'm no geopolitical analyst, though, and could absolutely be wrong!

Yeah... The Honda S500 did have a chain drive, but that's a different sort of car, and I think the chain was in a different place.

Oh well... Anyways, all this talk has me inspired to build a fast chassis with 4WS that switches from regular to crab depending on speed, just to see the effects. This is one area where my PU will be very useful!

Thanks! That would be very cool, but I think the complexity would be very high. I think the most reliable way it could be done is by hooking up the Xerion rear axle mechanism to a rack/eccentric/LA connected to the shifting axle. This would then require mechanical lockouts at each end of the gears to avoid shifting, say, from 8th to 1st, and would also add a significant amount of resistance to the shifting mechanism. In the end, I think it can be done with Lego's reliability standards, and it would really restore my faith in the supercar line, but I have no expectations of such a complex system being put in an official set. I'll just hope for standard 8880 style 4WS and get back to my MOCing, where complexity is embraced and reliability is shunned!

I do recall reading about that sort of system (passive rear steering?). It would be a neat feature to include in a MOC, and as you said, it shouldn't be too hard. All you have to do is make the steering link longer or shorter than the suspension arms to cause the normally undesirable "bump steer." Do you know which way it would steer the compressed (outer) wheel? Would it be counter-steering or not? I've built traditional 4WS systems before where the rear axle either steers with or against the front one depending on which speed the transmission is in, usually using two Servo motors and a switch, but I also used a system similar to the one you describe here in my much smaller Audi RS6 Avant (although it wasn't mechanical). I used a pneumatic cylinder to steer the rear end, and powered it from a switch that cycled back and forth as the front rack moved. It didn't really work in practice, though, because the pneumatic cylinder I used was too weak.

I think the main thing that is unrealistic about the 8880 system is the angle the rear wheels steer--almost the same as the front ones! Real cars with 4WS have hardly any rear steering angle (3 degrees is what I recall seeing on the Porsche 918 Spyder I built once). Of course, such small angles aren't dramatic or very fun for play! I believe there have been mechanical 4WS systems before, though, on Honda Prelude's.

I expect we'll eventually start seeing model motors in sets, spun by differentials (Not all EVs have 'em, but some do.). Whether or not this would be specialized parts remains to be seen--I recall someone built a nice one in TC19. It would hurt to lose gearboxes, though. It's really the 1:8 supercars' only claim to mechanical complexity!

So, if I understand you correctly, the wing cycles between up and down as you push the car along? It's a cool mechanism, but I feel that it would be more meaningful to have it linked to the axle for shifting, so that higher gears would have lower wing angle, while lower gears would have a higher angle, or vice versa.

I'm glad you got something figured out!

Ok, thanks. I kind of want to go into a political rant, but instead I'll just revel in the depth of my rebellion from modern technology--I don't own a single USB-C plug!

Interesting! What's the official reasoning behind this?

Absolutely!

CADA half-bushes have the right outer profile, I believe, so two of them could nicely replace the proposed full bush. Too bad they ain't Lego!

Here's a slightly stronger and more compact version of my solution. Unfortunately it doesn't solve your main problem, but I think it's better in other respects.

I tried using the bush first, but the O-shaped end prevented full engagement for me. Mine was for a gearbox in a car, which tends to stretch gearboxes to the limit, so I wanted full engagement despite the costs. The 4L bar is annoying, but as I said, a 3L can be used instead, as can a cut 2L section of 4mm hose. @npicard Good idea to use the white pin; I forgot about it. I hope you're able to find a satisfactory solution!

One option would be to use the old 2L driving ring, which offers two different axle extenders with friction in between the two 3L ones. I had a similar situation recently, and my solution, though kind of weird, was like this, just with the driving ring and gears on the adjacent spots on the axle. The 4L bar can be replaced with a 3L to save space. The main disadvantage is that the one end of the axle can't transmit torque. Sometimes this doesn't matter; sometimes it's crucial. The 2l axle extender allows for a medium amount of friction.

That's pretty nice! I like Suzuki 4x4s, and yours looks like it would have good performance. I just built myself a custom 11.1V battery as well, and am excited about it! I suppose those O-frames are 3D printed? I could sure use bearings like that in my high-powered MOCs.

Just this past week I built myself a faux-Buwizz as well! I've now got three 3.7V lithium cells (from an electric jacket battery) hooked up in series to provide 11.1V. I've done some hacking of the original charger and battery circuit board, putting them into a Lego frame, and using aluminum foil and pen springs, allowing me to charge the cells in groups of any two. The performance boost over 7.4V is sweet, and it didn't cost me a cent!

I agree that something else, like an off-roader, would be awesome, but if the 1:8 scale were to be maintained we would likely end up with a much larger set, since trucks are bigger than cars. For example, see my 1:8.3 Ram TRX: It's not exactly small--it even marked the first time I ran out of friction pins in a MOC! I really would have liked to see a LR Defender successor, with the cool 4x4 body, and the appeal of a gearbox. I also agree that some new gears could make for a much simpler, more realistic gearbox, that would be more reliable. LBG! LBG! LBG! I wonder if they'll do a Porsche Taycan anytime soon. After all, big gas-guzzling supercars are increasingly being seen as irresponsible, and Lego may find it profitable to play to that belief. The sad side-affect would be the loss of complex transmissions (At least the Taycan is currently the only mass-produced electric car with a gearbox, so we could at least have a basic 2-speed.)