Stereo

A long time ago (2003) I tried pneumatics in the 8448: They might work better with modern heavier cars, but the friction in the cylinders meant they didn't work well here. To get them to move, I needed to run the system up to 10-15 psi, and then that much air in the cylinders would make the suspension rock hard at whatever position it was left at. In context as dampers you'd call them extremely overdamped.

They're more like having the two ports connected by a tube. The pneumatic air pumps are actually the closest thing to a spring+damper, it'd be mostly a friction damper though. As the internal seal generates most of the resistance. Likewise most designs of Lego spring have enough friction to effectively be damped. If they weren't being damped, cars would just continue bouncing once you compress and release the suspension spring.

It's a standard option, you can either get to it from the build page ('Change Build Options' button opens the settings), or, on the account settings page, go to "Building Sets/MOCs" and change the defaults so any time you get to a build page it'll be set the way you use.

Yeah, Rebrickable will tell you which part list a given part is in, but not really meant to sort down to X drawer, Y cabinet type detail. I believe the intended workflow on Rebrickable for private projects is that you create a Custom List, load the parts into it, use the list details to make it a "To Build" type list, which creates a 'Build this List' button that moves you into their regular building UI. From there you can edit the build options to disregard colour, part variants etc. as needed. Then click "Find my parts" to show which lists the parts necessary for the build are in. That page has a CSV export so you might be able to get a colour-specific list of what it found for you to take back to Brickstore's more detailed inventory; I haven't tried using it in any-colour builds that way.

Too bad the Cobra's arches aren't available black yet, they look a lot more like this style of flare.

I think they're the exhaust manifold, spark plugs go in the top of the head.

The article about repairability would be interesting to me but it seems to be based on the wrong data? It lists a few sets as 0% (Assembly Square, Land Rover Defender 90) that on their individual pages show the more accurate 2-3% which is low but not none.

I think it's the same thickness as the usual end-tolerance of a piece - so where a regular "2L" axle is 15.8mm, or a 2x2 brick is 15.8mm square, a 2L stuck into this goes up to 15.9mm.

They haven't done that in a while, the most recent I know of is https://rebrickable.com/sets/8655-1/rx-sprinter/?inventory=1#comments but it may have continued a couple years after that. Certainly none in the 2020s.

If I was gonna list things I don't like about decorated bricks, I'd probably say 1) clear backed stickers 2) stickers the "same" colour as the part 3) single-set prints 4) parts only available with prints, not blank Obviously point 1 and 2 are in contention, as you get one or the other. And also both have varying degrees of "badness" depending how large the area is, how easy to apply the sticker is, and so on. But also everything is a compromise between things I don't want, where the only real solution is "design the set to look good with less decoration". The single-set thing is more an issue the older the set gets; 3rd parties can reproduce sticker sheets more easily than they can print out of production bricks. A damaged printed part that was only in a single set can end up costing as much as the whole set to replace.

Trans-red brakelights?

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures when I opened one to repair it, but the BrickTracks switch stand is fairly easy to open, you just have to release the 6 clips on the underside by pushing on the sloped side of them. So you could probably reduce friction quite a bit on the protective switch by opening it up and shaving down the detent that makes it snap into place. I believe it's on the light gray piece that rotates.

It's got 2 shift rings that are moved by two toggles on the same axle so they move together, one connects top+bottom on the red side (8-24 ratio). The other uses a free-floating 24t to connect the two bottom axles directly in an 8:20 ratio. As the 24:20 meshes in a 2 across, 2 up axle offset. It looks like only one has the special 3L axle connector that 'latches' the shift position, the other one slides freely but since the toggles are connected, it'll always be the same. (this photo is the bottom of the car, vs. the above picture being the gearbox from above) I believe the red side's bottom axle connects to the differential and the yellow side's bottom axle connects to the engine. But it could be the other way around. So the 8:24:20 connection directly couples them and skips the rest of the gearbox as an 8:20 ratio (reverse since it has the idler gear), while the 8:24 top+bottom connects differential to red side, then the two selected gears on the top axles connect through to the yellow side bottom axle. The white clutch being on the red drum side also makes sense to be closest to the differential to me, if the gearbox is stuck anywhere, the car will still be able to roll.

I'm sure it's the other way around, steel car frames with no body are an everyday thing for some companies, any important measurements are just copying the Koenigsegg engineering (suspension positions), and getting it to support a very heavy body. Building a several 100,000 piece LEGO body is the part that takes a lot of time and planning.

Looking at them, I think the red drum has 3 engagements 120° apart, and the yellow one has a single 120° section that engages. Which should also mean the axles are 120° different positions on the yellow one (30°, modulo 90) and 40° different on the red one, so that the 3 drums on each side engage at different times. So your gear pattern is Y1R1, Y1R2, Y1R3, Y2R1, etc. Y1 XXX______ Y2 ___XXX___ Y3 ______XXX R1 X__X__X__ R2 _X__X__X_ R3 __X__X__X Guessing the build will lock out the shifting temporarily so you can assemble everything in the correct orientation, since it takes a while to go the full length of the chassis, then unbuild that and put the regular detent in.

Looking at the prototypes I think they originally had something more complicated with 3 types of shift drum in order to use existing gear ratios. Also the two sides' drums are engaged 1:1 using knob gears, and the shift indicator print is evenly spaced on that same axle so it's some pattern of 9 positions directly encoded by the drums (one every 40 degrees). By adding a ratio between 16:16 and 20:12 they can run a simpler pattern, I think the drums still need a weird axle offset, which now that I'm looking for it, the yellow axle connectors on the yellow drum side do look to be different after passing through 2 yellow drums.

My read of the gearbox is that it has 3 yellow shift drums on the left of the car, which each have 2 positions, neutral and engaged. So you have 123 on one drum, then the next engages 456, then 789. The two easily visible ones in photos/video have 8:24 and 16:16 ratios, so maybe the other one is 12:20 or 24:8. At the front under the driver's seat is the reverse/forward selector, one's geared 8:20 (uses a 24t gear as an intermediate to reverse direction) and the other 8:24. I would guess the 8:24 is the reverse if I'm seeing correctly which gears link to the differential. Less visible from photos are 3 red drums on the right side of the car, I think these do the 1-2-3 selections, the visible ones have 18:14 and 16:16, and probably the third is 20:12 (visible 20t gear but I can't confirm it's on the right axle). What would make sense to me is the red drums are going round multiple times, so 1 and 4 are 360 degrees apart, I don't know if that means they have weird 120 offsets on their axles. And then the yellow ones have 1/4 of the drum offset, so they can turn 30 degrees each shift (30, 60, 90 = 1-2-3, 120 150 180 = 4-5-6, 210 240 270 = 7-8-9). I don't see any shift forks that engage in both directions, they're all one-sided, which simplifies the actual gearing but means more drums.

They're not red and LBG, and the white one doesn't have the same indents as the grey 16z. It does seem to have small holes so it's not a 12z.

It's a new pair of gears, reddish orange 18 with clutch, white 14 with axle, or something like that. Unless they recoloured the 12T blue spur gear to white for some reason. Also, red shift drums on the right of the car, yellow on the left.

The two variants are one symmetrical, with selections at 0 and 180 (same as the wave shifter before them), and the other one asymmetrical with selections at 0 and 135°. So that you can have 4 of the first kind in an 8-speed gearbox, or 3 of the second kind in a 6-speed gearbox, and simply rotate 45 degrees per gear to select them, instead of an uneven pattern of some kind.

Giving it a bit more thought and an actual "64t" gear to test on, the one I come up with is 1.5, 4.77, 5, though with the way I built a 1.5 edge does mean the middle axle is part of the planet carrier and it needs a 12T clutch gear for the sun. I only have 12t straight gears so I can't test how smooth this spins. The planets don't really have anywhere to go though, their rotation's synchronized, so maybe just building a 9.5L beam between them that skips over the centre would be good enough. Or you could use 10288 triple connector with 3L axles, and 32013 #1, and a 1.8 stud spacer (1L beam + 2 rings, should tighten down to slightly less than 1.8). 3 planets do barely work with this setup... I'm not sure they work in reality because 140 isn't divisible by 3 so the phase might not match closely enough.

The flippers on the back of the legs is neat, makes total sense but I never thought of doing that.

They don't show the set limits anymore, so it's not really fair to say "the cap shouldn't change". if it's available you can buy it, that's all they intend to let you know. It's not like it gets cheaper at the end of the availability window. I suppose for people who intend to be resellers, it's good data on which set's got more demand than availability, but if you actually want the sets, you have lots of time.

If you're building it planetary anyway, you can make the planet carrier smaller with triangles. Eg. this 3-6-6 liftarm triangle has 4.9 studs width instead of 5 (0.8mm less), and then if you want to continue using 16N+8 gears (8, 24, 40, 64) you can just use beams to make another triangle of whole numbers (marked 4.9-5-5) that would work (I'm using 40t gears as a demo cause studio has them) I think 140 is in the 8N+4 set so it might just directly go 20-64-140 or something as well.

Yeah, I'm expecting a printed brick. Maybe they'll splurge and do a bigger print on a 2x3 panel piece instead of a beam, since those go in most of the sets now.