johnnytifosi

Since Lego does not seem to care no matter how much we bitch about the pricing online, either the licensing really works in increasing the sales (if they asked 240 bucks for a 1360 piece unlicensed set everybody would tell them to f off, but there will always be new suckers that have to have the latest set because it is Ferrari / Star Wars / you name it), or the sales in units may have decreased but the lower volume / higher pricing model is more profitable. Either way, it does not look good: Technic is now functionless licensed merchandise with ridiculous price tags. I am completely losing my interest in the theme while I barely got out of my dark ages couple of years ago. Lego seems to be milking the target group that grew up with its toys during their golden era and now has disposable income, but I can't see how they can win over nowadays's kids to be lifelong fans with their current portfolio.

Red Bull 1639 pieces 240$ Ferrari 1362 pieces 240$ Large piece disparity between two similar tests and shocking prices.

A good starter car.

After some general refinement, including the front cone, the gap above the steering linkage, rear view mirrors, the plates used as base and the internal structure, this model looks complete to me and it exceeded my expectations. It uses 273 out of 421 pieces. All that remains is generating some instructions and verifying the build for myself, and hopefully make some more improvements when I see the model in the flesh. One could make an argument about the incontinuity of the shape above the steering linkage, but there aren't enough blue pieces in the set to make this much better in my opinion, and there is the space limitation of the steering mechanism (axle, gear, moving gear rack) underneath.

I am mostly satisfied with how this model turns out so far. This is an empty shell and needs some reinforcement in its insides, but I have plenty of spare pieces, currently using 253/421 pieces. I don't like how the black plates stick out in the front, but I have a limited selection of large plates to implement the shape of the car. I do have a 3x6 wedge plate that could prove handy for the front conical shape if I figure out another way to solve this geometry puzzle.

@Xfing I agree with your post. I will preface that I am a huge 90s Technic fan. Studded Technic just had a feeling of quality and sturdiness that studless Technic has never achieved. Even large, overbuilt sets like the Arocs or the red rough terrain crane still feel soggy when pressed or twisted. Technic lost one of its two modes of connections (studs and pins) and everything is held together only by pins, which usually make now 1/3 of a set's pieces and makes for less enjoyable building and disassembly. Putting together studs is way more satisfying than pins. Moreover, I never really got into understanding how studless Technic is built. Studded Technic was very intuitive, building from the bottom up and it was a seamless transition from System. Assembling new studless sets with an ever increasing inventory of special connectors and panels trying to make up for the inability to stack liftarms vertically feel more like assembling a puzzle rather than Lego. Then there is the topic of motorization that other people brought up. Powered Up has been a huge failure for the known reasons (ho hardware controller, software dependence per set, no unified motor and battery box, extremely limited availability in sets), and it is obvious from the fact that MOCers still cling on to the now defunct since 6 years Power Functions system because it just works. Then consider the fact that now Technic is essentially a licensed merchandise theme, releasing the same copy pasted 1:16, 1:10 and 1:8 car year after year, and the B-models are eliminated, and it is nowhere near close what it once was when I grew up. Then tackling your question: will it go back? My opinion is definitely not, Technic seems to be still selling well no matter whatever crap Lego keeps churning out and how many features they remove. Technic seems a lost cause since 2018 for me and there does not seem to be any signs that things will change. Returning to studded building after 20 years is out of the question in my opinion. Lego seems to ideologically avoid studded Technic pieces even at points where you would think they would be really needed. Modern Technic sets are all about covering everything with panels, and the studded look will look weird to current clients. Even new System sets are all about hiding studs nowadays with SNOT building and tiles. I don't have high hopes for non-licenced models or B-models making a return, or Lego releasing a better motorization system either.

Hello everybody, I recently got the Model Team 5541 set, and thinking about possible alternate builds suddenly the idea of doing a 1960s F1 car popped to my mind, as it would be quite suitable for the available pieces. I googled around for classic 1960s cars, and as an avid F1 fan I decided on the legendary Lotus 49 as a good template. I think the chrome pieces of the set will make good exhaust pipes and roll bar, and the plentiful curved slopes will make for a good cigar-like shape for the car. Based on the pictures I used as a guide and using the wheels as a reference for scale, I have decided on a 6-stud wide body. The main colour will be of course blue (instead of green), with a red stripe on top and red air intake (instead of yellow). My main concerns now are how to implement the cone like shape in the front (medium difficulty, I have two ideas as is shown in the first pic), and how to hide/replace the whole rear black assembly and make something resembling a suspension with the parts available (hard difficulty). I've done plenty of small MOCs in the past, but I think this is the most ambitious and the first time I try to replicate a real life model. As a result it will take some time and I was eager to share the early progress, hopefully getting some feedback in the process. If this succeeds I will post free instructions too. Here are some early screenshots placing the main parts of the car, copying some sub builds from the official A model: Cheers!

All the recent 10 euro sets were around 170-190 parts (dump truck, snow groomer, bulldozer), or around 140 pieces at worst (telehandler or skid steeer loader, which were still great little sets). Going down to 104 pieces for something as complex as a backhoe is almost polybag territory. Either the rumour is false or this set will be a big disappointment.

Second update: I applied clear nail polish to a painted piece and it ruined the ink. I had to use acetone to remove it, which removed not only the ink but also the original chrome, leaving the bare plastic piece. Then repainting the bare piece resulted in a better result than before, because the piece was smoother without the flaking chrome it originally had. So it may be a radical approach, but removing the worn chrome altogether and painting over the piece from scratch will give a better result.

@Autumn it is a worn chrome piece. It felt smooth to the touch but after painting it has produced this weird effect. It definitely doesn't look that bad from afar.

Yes, and it was already too skeletal with over twice the pieces. I am setting up myself for disappointment with this one, just like with this year's bulldozer.

10 F1 sets with 10 teams on the grid sounds like we are getting 10 recolours of the same set which is going to be boring. Plus the theme should finally live up to its name and launch some actual champions, i.e. motorsport legends and not some irrelevant modern road cars. The only sets that fit that description so far have been the Audi Quattro, Ferrari 512 M and MaLaren F1 LM. Getting F1 cars is at least a step in the right direction, even if most of them are still irrelevant historically.

I really wonder how they are going to make a backhoe with 104 pieces. I will watch this with great interest.

I got a liquid chrome marker from Aliexpress and set out to paint some pieces. Overall, the results were pretty decent for what is a very basic procedure. Most of the chrome pieces of my set were badly worn and I painted over most of them, including cylindrical bricks, headlights and antennas. A couple from the exhaust stack pieces were missing, so instead of buying new pieces for 3 euro each, I replaced them with the much cheaper Technic connectors 75535 and 25214 which happen to have the same dimensions and are much sturdier when connected with Technic pins. In the pic below you can see left to right: 1. Painted Technic connectors, 2. original chrome pieces in good condition mounted in my 5541 set, 3. repainted worn chrome pieces. I think the result on the Technic connectors exceeded my expectations. It is certainly not as reflective as the original chrome, but it is great for 10 cents worth of pieces and a 2 euro marker. The repainted chrome pieces do look a bit rougher in my opinion. They felt smooth to the hand before painting, but the ink may be exaggerating the imperfections of the surface. In both cases, they look way better than the worn pieces. Another photo (Technic connectors to the left, repainted chrome bricks to the right): The ink does need about a day to fully cure, and it is a bit sensitive to wear if you rub it with force. I will experiment a bit further the next days, trying a second coat of paint and/or a coat of clear nail polish to see if I can achieve a shinier or more durable result. @Lego Tom interesting product but as you can see I just went on with the marker. Also I am not sure how do you apply this material on uneven surfaces like Lego bricks?

That's purely a hypothesis. We don't know how pricing would change if B-models were reintroduced, but we know that prices increased even though B-models were eliminated. Moreover, the only product line still offering alternative builds (Creator 3-in-1) paradoxically seems to offer the best bang to buck in a price per amount of stuff perspective. As I said, the price of Lego is based only on what the market can bear, and everything else is unimportant, including B-models. This is why pricing can be inconsistent even across product lines: the most obscene pricing can be found in the product lines with the most fanboys or adult fans with the most disposable income, which are mostly some licensed themes (star wars, harry potter, "18+" Technic etc.).

Are you really trying to excuse TLG here? If the cost reduction through elimination of B-models was passed on to the consumers, that would be a valid argument, but we all know that in the past 5-6 years TLG is offering less (no B-models, no power functions, no hardware remotes, etc.), but we didn't see a single price drop by any metric, alas they are charging more and more. Do not try to make any sense of Lego pricing other than that people will just pay the price. It is obvious from the various knock-offs that still turn out a profit that the true cost per set is in the order of a few tens of dollars. It's just plastic ffs. Here is the obligatory reminder that for the same (inflation adjusted) price of the sorry G500 set you mentioned, Lego used to offer the Arocs with more parts, power functions, pneumatics, license AND a B-model. I rest my case.

Looking at some past documents of mine, I think you should add these lines to your Latex code: \usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref} %include URLs without box \usepackage[nottoc,numbib]{tocbibind} %include references in table of contents Reference here: https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Hyperlinks#PDF-specific_options

Yes. Ford not bothering to sue you because you made a few hundred bucks on Lego instructions doesn't make it any less illegal to use their brand to make a product. Of course they won't do it because the backlash a multi-billion dollar company would face for going after a random hobbyist would be a PR disaster.

Wow, what an amazing piece of work! As a bookworm myself, I will definitely read this soon. I have to give some kudos particularly for doing this properly in Latex, it looks professionally edited. However, I wonder why there are no clickable links in the table of contents and the associated bookmarks in the sidebar. Thanks for sharing this for free.

It's nice to see this topic opened since I made a similar comment with @Sokolov Edward 's one somewhere else. Personally, I dislike paid MOCs on principle. Lego is still a hobby and it should offer joy. But unlike other communities where information is shared freely, everything about Lego nowadays seems to have been encompassed by greed, be it reselling, scalping, "investing", selling instructions, and TLG's own policies of offering less and charging more every year. Of course I am not going to preach to anyone how to share their work, but at least I set my own example and offer any MOCs I do for free, simply because it will offer me joy once in a while if somebody posts a photo of the build and a "thank you comment". I think the issue wouldn't bother me that much normally, but it does because of the elimination of B-models in Technic. This gives one no alternatives but to scour Rebrickable for alternative builds, and then get disappointed. Some examples are the Ford GT set, where 34 of the 40 alternative builds are premium, or the recent G Wagon set for which we see front paged MOCs now, where all 4 builds so far are premium too. Whatever new sets I have bought recently are ones with a decent community around them, and these are usually Creator 3-in-1 sets or the smaller Technic sets. I am somewhat bothered that the forum enables self promotion, and I find it ironic that people have the nerve to claim they can charge for their "own IP" on a model of something they don't have the license for. Let's face it, just like TLG requires a license to release a G Wagon, so does one in order to earn money on a model of a X real car.

Damn that is quite the find, congrats. So this is the same guy as my first link.

The store seems to be shut down but I will give it a shot.

Hello there, Digging through the internet about info on the 5571 Giant Truck I was quite lucky to score recently, I found out about a cab-over truck alternative build circulating around over a decade ago. I found the same build in several places: Some brickshelf folders from 2007 and 2009: https://brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=280792 https://brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=408432 Another link with higher resolution photos: https://www.skorpio.rocks/lego-moc-s/5571-model-b-c-moc-s/ And finally, a thread here in Eurobricks where somebody claims the build as their own (?) and tries to sell instructions for it 4 years later in 2011: So this is quite a long shot, but does anyone still have the instructions and is willing to share them? Otherwise I will try my best to reverse engineer it with the photos of the first link and post it on rebrickable for free, but I guess it will be quite the PITA. Cheers!

Hello everybody, I just got my holy grail 5571 Giant Truck, after searching for a good deal for years. I found one in a reasonable price, and despite missing a few pieces, surprisingly all the chrome parts are there but most are badly worn. Still wanting to keep the whole thing as low cost as possible, I don't want to get new expensive chrome parts from Bricklink, but repair the existing ones. I found out that there are "liquid chrome" coloured markers, which produce a reasonable result, but apparently they wear out easily too. I've seen recommendations elsewhere about using primer or clear coat, but I am not sure what they are or how to apply them. Has anyone experience on this and any recommendations how to proceed to achieve a shinier or more long lasting result? Reminder that I want to keep this as cheap as possible, I am not willing to get specialized equipment to repaint a few pieces. Some examples of applications I found on Lego are below: https://old.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/qdfer5/ruined_my_old_5541_hotrod_with_some_liquid_chrome/ https://old.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/15fl6fk/chrome_pens_work_pretty_well/ https://old.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/yfqh2e/how_could_i_not_want_to_chrome_them/ Cheers.

One can use whatever wheels they see fit. The point of this build was to stay within the limitations of the 42043 inventory. I describe the shortcomings in my original post anyway.