gyenesvi

That runs pretty smooth even on the dense grass! And indeed, the cost sounds good too! What are those motors exactly? They seem pretty flat! And how did you fix the U-joint to the output shaft? With a thin plate inserted?

You need to learn to read these properly and take then with a grain of salt. It was clearly some AI generated piece of text copy-pasted from somewhere (maybe based on people's wishes expressed somewhere). Also, motorizing a 1:8 supercar with lego electronics would be clearly a pointless thing, even 1:10 cars can only move quite slowly with weak lego electronics; all playability would be lost.

Congrats on the model! Can you please give more insight into what this exactly means, how it is achieved? I don't know how a proper boxer engine should work, but some people say this cannot be true with the lego cam/piston pieces. For example, there are 3 cams and 6 pistons, so they are paiwise connected/dependent. Is that true for the real engine? Furthermore, the cams can only be rotated 90 degrees, no 60 or 120 degree difference can be made (as would be realistic to achieve uniform spacing). That means that two cams will be 180 degree opposite each other, which means that 2 pistons out of the 6 are going to fire at the same time (on opposing sides). Is that realistic for this car? Or do we misunderstand something?

Thanks, nothing specific, just the overall constructions is what I was curious about!

Looks cool on pictures, do you have a video of it floating? :) Though may be hard to capture.. Can you show details of the new parts you developed?

Merry Christmas! That sounds like a good adventure! :)

Merry Christmas to You All!

I like the chassis construction a lot, everything is neatly packed in, and seems to drive well even with standard PF electronics! And looks cool too!

Indeed, deserves to be seen here! A 7 stud wide build with 3 RC functions is another testament on how much potential is left on the table by official Lego electronics!

Anyone else having invisible white text on white background on the Technic subforum? Happens only here, other themes render well. Checked on multiple devices and multiple browsers, same everywhere for me. @Jim what's happening?

If there's only weight limit, then what's the contest really about? I think the B model requirement makes it more interesting, that's where we started from, no? I don't think there's a need for requiring a part list. For such small builds, it should mostly be possible to see on the photos that parts of the B model are also in the A model. If something is not visible, it's possible to ask where it is, or even request more photos that make certain parts visible.

Yeah, I think we converged to that as well, and about 300g seems to be a good limit. One questions we had is whether tires should be counted into the weight in order not to penalize cars too much against builds that don't have wheels.

I tend to agree with what @allanp is articulating here. There are many builders out there, but the distribution of talent is not uniform, far from it. There are a lot of people who just buy and build sets and MOCs, post them on FB, maybe criticize them, but don't make anything on their own. They don't even know what parts exist in technic. Then there are people who make their own MOCs, but most of them copy ideas from other MOC designers, tinker with the looks and make some modifications. And finally there are the MOC designers who push the limits and design new stuff, concepts that have never been built before. You know, those people who know all technic parts by heart and know exactly what can and cannot be built, and maybe even design and 3d print their own. That's a very small minority, but those are exactly the ones that TLG should be monitoring for ideas of improvement. And exactly those people are highly concentrated on this forum. So we may be a small minority, but exactly the important one. This phenomenon has been observed in many areas of life, it is called the Pareto principle: the majority of the effects comes from a small minority of causes. So if TLG are smart, they do monitor this minority. Also agree on this one. They probably know exactly that they must not f**k this one up, so they might hold this back until they can come out with a good implementation that aims to live up to the expectations, which are pretty high. Also, now they do have the JCB license, so we know that at least that's not a blocker. Well, this kind of easy money is actually very good for us MOC builders too, because it is providing us with parts in colors that would not exist otherwise. And these models are probably not replacing other models, rather they are an addition to the lineup. I think this is a good strategy for having a better parts palette and earning a bit more money too, so it's a win-win.

Here is the link to download for the round one.

Well yeah, it all sounds more like a wish-list than anything plausible. Also, most of the rumored (= talked about by the fans but nothing backing it from TLG) setups make no sense, like motorization of a rocket / speed champion sized cars, or the Porsche at $150 (another PU Porsche after last year?).

I think the one on the leaked image had large tractor tires, not medium. Count length of the green beam above the front tire..

I did not mean to say that we didn't have it this year, I meant to add it as a requirement in general. You are right, and on multiple occasions I said that I am satisfied with this year's new parts and hope this trend continues in the future.

Those adapters actually look quite good, simple and easy to print! This could be really useful solution to make servos in alternative form factors (for example flat to put on a straight axle).

If the printed gear holds up well, that looks like a really nice compact solution, I like it! Interesting, and what did you need to do to adapt it to the lego system? Are you using a servo horn based or a gear based solution?

I would add to this one that at least some car sets should also have some innovative stuff in them. I think there would be less complaints, but people would still point out the emptiness/repetitiveness/lack of functions in those car sets. But at least then it could be defendable by arguing that it's just extra on top of the good amount of good quality sets.

Well, I think you kind of got lucky there :) Sometimes just releasing and trying again, or moving the steering around can help move past a stuck position. Also, often (with proper RC cars) giving a burst of throttle can help move out of those situations, but lego motors are not powerful enough to allow for such bursts (since they were already running at full speed when the model was crawling slowly). What happens is when the lock is on, the wheels are forced to spin together. If the motors cannot move the truck, it gets stalled. If you unlock it, the wheels that are less blocked will start to spin (almost freely), but typically, that's not enough to move the vehicle once it got stuck like that because those wheels have little traction. You might have had a bit of luck there though, as that allows at least the front wheel to spin up, so that might have helped a bit, but not for long. In general, the locked position has more chance of moving the vehicle.

Glad you find my suggestions/link useful. I am not sure what you are referring to here. Is it with open or with closed diff? I am guessing open diff, because otherwise there would be no power transfer from one axle to the other when one is stuck. But that's actually a disadvantage of the open diff, not an advantage. Power always gets transferred towards the least traction, away from wheels that have traction, which seems like the car is trying hard, but trying at the wrong spot. So in the end it's not useful. Or do I misunderstand something? Also, I guess sand does not work well even with tractor tires because once the sand gets into the cracks of the tires, it behaves like a big slick tire, which is not great.. Wet sand may require tire with special tread pattern / material that does not let the sand fill up the tread.

I guess it allows reaching ultimate speeds without worrying about melting parts. Maybe also it allows for ways of controlling speed of wheels separately to create under/overs-steer. But I guess you are questioning the point of it because it removes the drivetrain, hence much of the realism modeling aspect. I tend to agree, I mean I like to build the drivetrains, but I guess you could say the in-wheel drive will also become kind of realistic of EVs. That's a nice looking effort! Here's how I see it. I think using an RC system adds value to both brushed and brushless setups because of the good physical, configurable, precise control, plus the option to use proper servos. Also, it has the advantage of more powerful batteries compared to lego ones and even to Buwizz. Brushed RC electronics can be used with lego motors, buggy motors or Buwizz motors, so adding a brushed RC motor is not necessary. True that you could have a single more powerful motor, but then it is worth more to go brushless; it is a more efficient, more modern system with more active development I'd guess. Then it is possible to bring out the true power of modern RC systems, a single, small drive motor in better form factor than lego/buggy/buwizz motors. While brushless motors have the potential to be overly powerful for lego parts and destroy everything, they also hide an opportunity: powerful smaller / lighter models. By looking at many MOCs of the past and going to Buwizz competitions, I believe we have converged to a sweet spot of using max 4 Buwizz motors (powered by 2 Buwizz units), split into 2 pairs for front/rear axles. Even coupling 4 motors on a single axle has proven to be too much for the plastic (tried by different people on multiple occasions). Part of this is because building 4 buwizz motors and 2 buwizz units into a model already requires a fairly large scale and results in significant weight, and even when possible, it consumes a significant part of the space available / restricts drivetrain and suspension types. Also, the resulting speed already poses controllability problems, at least for off-roaders, where higher speeds can lead to more crashes and even just more stress on the parts due to bumps, which is again amplified by larger weight. So more precise control becomes more important. Having the same amount of power at smaller/lighter models and more control over speed/steering could potentially push the limit further without melting/breaking the plastic. With powerful small brushless motors we have the potential to build models that are not just a big chunk of electronics, but also have space for more interesting/realistic drivetrain/suspension details and more aesthetic bodyworks as a few hundred grams of extra weight may not be an issue when a base is light enough. My last build, the small Defender was an entirely different playing experience for me than my previous lego models, and it uses the smallest possible brushless motor I could find, is already too fast for my control capabilities and then I realized that my ESC wasn't even controlling it at full speed.. now imagine that in medium sized build where I can flesh out more complex suspension/drivetrain/bodywork.. So I guess what I'm saying is that if I already take the effort to use RC electronics, then restricting myself to poorly shaped buggy motors does not make too much sense if I have the option to use small powerful brushless motors too because now the limit with buggy motors is the power to size ratio. That's not to say I won't build with buwizz motors any more, but I guess I'll keep those for buwizz competitions.

I tend to agree with this, lots of possibilities for improving parts and building techniques within cars. Wanted to ask the same, but just let it go..

No, dark ages is when you don't build any more, not when you don't buy sets. So no problem here, keep on doing it, maybe buy some sets for the parts, and don't get disappointed about the sets; after you reach a certain level in designing your own stuff, it's natural that anything that TLG makes will not be so satisfying to you as it used to be. That's just how it is.