Stereo

Also not really a new thing... 8810 in 1991 is a small motorcycle, 8210 in 1995 is a same size small motorcycle. Just white and red. I haven't checked how identical the builds are, but they are not far.

Could be, but rubber ducks are also a Jeep thing, popular with offroaders at least in America.

It would be 4.5, there's 1.5 studs past the wheel, 1 in the wheel, 1 in the beam behind it, and 1 to go into an axle connector. Or it could be 8.5 and go all the way into the differential. Or it's just a 5.5 that's brown for some reason.

Ah, that makes sense, I thought about that piece but didn't see the one side has 5x3 L and the other doesn't. Got up to 148 with the chain tensioner (and realising the part count I was looking at is wrong...), could probably hide 1-2 more pieces by filling every hole in the chassis with pins. Maybe replace a 2L liftarm with 2 thin ones or similar. It's kinda interesting how using yellow as the accent means this set really doesn't have much colour barf. There's the red bushes, 2l axles, and the blue pins. 5L axles and pistons being yellow just looks fine.

The middle layer of the rear axle seems to be a piece I don't recognize. Maybe a 3x5 frame? At least, it looks like it fits inside the wheel, rather than being spaced out from it a 1/2 stud. If it was a 5x7 then it should have 3 pinholes along the back edge and it doesn't. The other layers could be 2x3 frames or the same 3x5 rotated the other way. I guess a 3x5 L is possible but I'm not sure how you would build it into something secure that way.

I had a go reverse engineering it, but with 29 chain links (I'd guess 28 to 30, would need to build irl to know, and maybe it has a chain tensioner like the red bike), it is quite short on parts at 138 for everything visible: The grey pin at the bottom of the black L-beam is somewhat a mystery to me, I guessed a pin-pin-axle, but it doesn't seem like it has any purpose a blue 3l pin wouldn't serve. So it might have something else there. Friction pin with stud for example.

Black 32123b on the wheels is one new part I spot (did exist in 32123a... in one set). I don't see the new links in blue though, the front bumper is using the 2x4 one.

50th for Technic is also 2027 so I expect they'd do something for that.

Yeah, I stopped working on it, to think about how to fit that in. The main concern is keeping the tie bar's pin underneath the switch plate, so things can't get caught on the edges. And it multiplies the number of states the switch can be in, from only left or right, to tie left switch right, tie left switch left, etc. with slightly different measurements.

A long string of them with frictionless pins would also make an interesting "rope" linkage. Not prone to twisting in the way alternating layers is. 32294 Wishbones they also make a good shorter version. Though not as aesthetic.

Is the middle of the hood using the 9x3 quarter ellipse from Sonic the Hedgehog sets? Pretty blurry picture so it's hard to see if it's multiple curved parts.

5-12-13 also works well in plate dimensions - 5 plates is 2 studs, 12 plates is 4 bricks, so if you have a 1x4 brick with 4 1x2 bricks on top, you can connect diagonally at an exact distance using a stack of 5 bricks with a plate somewhere in the middle.

Hmm, black parts pretty often look like that to me. Though not an identical pattern. Here's some on the bottom of my lime Lamborghini from a couple years ago, the 2nd from the bottom has the mold mark side up, the rest the opposite side.

Depending where you have clearance to work with there's a few ways to make a strong connection at ~4.5 length: Piece 7244 + 22961 can also work, attached together with a 4L beam, but I don't have 7244 in my Stud.io cause it's recent.

I like '93 a lot. Though part of that is cause it's the first year I got Technic sets, so certain design elements just look familiar. I think to me the Barcode Truck is the peak of studded Technic builds though. Very full of functions driven off the motor. I'm lucky enough to have that and the 8462 Tow Truck in the OP, and the Barcode Truck feels more solid. Though to be fair, it weighs so much that it cracked its wheels at some point in the last 20 years... there's a reason that wheel got redesigned. I put some 4L axles with stop in the front of mine when I noticed, to give them a fighting chance of not getting worse. I rebuilt a lot of my small to midsize 90s Technic sets lately, and was reflecting that 8417 is arguably the first large studless set. No studded building for strength, studs only appear to attach decoration. The rest of the large '98 sets used plate+stud chassis with studless bodywork.

I don't know, I'm guessing people call ~2010-2011 the peak of consistently having trucks in the lineup? 2010: 2 car/motorcycle, 3 heavy duty trucks, 4 off-road equipment (excavator/tractor), 1 helicopter 2011: 3 car/SUV, 5 heavy duty trucks, 1 off-road equipment (backhoe), 1 helicopter 2012: 2 car/quadcycle, 3 heavy duty trucks, 2 off-road equipment (tractor/crane), 2 aircraft 2013: 7 car/truck/motorcycle, 2 heavy duty trucks, 2 off-road equipment (excavator/backhoe), 1 hovercraft It's not really that favorable compared to modern era 2024: 12 car/truck/motorcycle, 2 heavy duty trucks, 6 off-road equipment (incl. space rovers), 1 aircraft, 1 boat, 1 orrery 2025: 13 car/truck/motorcycle, 1 heavy duty truck, 5 off-road equipment (excavator/loader), 1 aircraft, 1 submarine Categories aren't necessarily super well defined, I put anything that's people-transport in the first group (monster trucks, pickup trucks), anything that has functionality and can drive highway speeds in the second (mobile cranes, flatbed trucks, semi trucks), other wheeled/tracked vehicles with functions in the third (so sort of 'anything else') This year's heavy duty truck does let down the category a bit compared to 15 years ago, but last year had 42175 which I'd say is a decent member of that category... For me the wheel loader is the only 'must buy' of the year but I haven't actually picked it up yet - got a good deal on an 8865 which seemed more urgent than stuff that's still at retail sale.

Good progress on the switch, it's now feature-complete for a version that will not let you run backwards the wrong way. I designed it to use BrickTracks switch stands primarily cause I have a couple so I can measure them, but also I think they have a good feature set (works on either side of the switch as needed, low profile, simpler track piece). 6-gauge R85 switch to demonstrate something new, not just a copy of existing sizes. I was a bit conservative removing studs, so round tiles should stick to all of them, and square tiles to most. The switch mechanism's designed to assemble from the top with no tools. First you slide the tie bar (light grey) in through its slot, first through the diverging rail, then back through the straight rail to lock it in. Then use the underside features of the points to connect it: 1) Knob fits into a groove and can be slid into its place. 2) The other end of the switch has a slot for the tiebar to move it. 3) Then rotate the point into place and this ledge prevents the knob from popping out. Once the switch stand is attached to the tiebar, the range the tiebar can move is limited to where ledge #3 is always engaged, so nothing can come apart. I also have one feature that only makes sense for a 3d printed part - the straight rail is hollowed out so the point piece can slide underneath it. This stops the end of the point from lifting up, without needing a little latch around the end of the point. The groove #1 is curved away from the rail because of this - the point drops in at the loose end, but then slides under the rail. One thing I'm not really happy with is that the point piece is lower at the knob end, so it has no ideal orientation to prevent supports. The mechanism only has 1.9mm of vertical space to fit in otherwise, and I didn't want to go to <1mm thickness, so having it descend halfway into the tie keeps everything 1.6mm around there. (the tiebar ends are 0.8mm thin around the hole, but it's the easiest part to replace if broken) I have some limitations on what I can generate because of the ties - they're only coded to work as multiples of 4 - but I can still use some odd numbers. Here's a 5-gauge switch on 14 stud track spacing, making it R227.5 and 56 studs long. I'm still stress testing it by trying odd values, but I think it's pretty close to ready to share/print now. One flaw I'm aware of is that in 4-stud narrowgauge, there's no way to insert the tiebar without bending it. The simple solution is cut off the end loop on the point side - it needs to be 1 stud shorter for the insertion method to work. I'd also like to make a click-detent version of the tiebar so it's more functional without the BrickTracks switch stand, I just need to decide where along the tie to position it. Once I'm fully happy with it, I'll set up a version of the file for diverging routes that just has you pick radius and track length. Mostly a matter of going through and redoing some of the tie generation logic so it doesn't assume the two routes have near-equal track length.

On the actual car they're pistons mounted to the underside of the car that lift all 4 wheels off the ground when air is applied, then retract when air pressure is removed, it's to make pit stops quicker. For Lego it's probably linkages. "Accurate firing order" is doubtful to me, 6 cylinder boxers use 120 degree angle crank offsets and every single piston is on its own offset section of the crank, since each pair of opposed cylinders hits TDC at the same time. Would need new parts designs.

The usual construction to power it from outside the tower would be a turntable - for example Large 60 tooth is the current production piece, they've had about 5 minor variants over the last 40 years - so one motor meshes with the teeth on its perimeter, and the other runs an axle up through the center to drive functions inside the spinning pole. It depends how large you want the build to be, but 36 tooth gears could provide the linkage of the 4 arms on top - which are external to the pole on the actual one. 3 of them would be mounted exterior only, 1 would have an axle run through to the interior of the tower and connect to the axle coming up the middle.

I briefly mentioned the Pythagorean triples before but I was thinking about them again, and used them to derive the curve radius for switches, so I'll demonstrate that: The base unit "1" is how far the switch has to diverge so that a symmetric piece will meet it from a parallel track. Here it's 8 studs. Switch "size 3" is thus 24 studs long, 3*8. It creates the green triangle, whose hypotenuse is the radius of the curve, and 'base' is 3. The other edge is 1 less than the radius by geometry. So we have the Pythagorean triple r² = (r-1)² + 3². In this case it's easy to observe that it's 3-4-5, but more generally, replace 3 with x and expand: r² = r² - 2r + 1 + x² 2r = 1 + x² r = (1+x²)/2 So for 'size 5', r = (1+5²)/2 = 13. Multiply by studs per base unit 13*8 = R104. Anyway, burying the lede, I've got parameterized rail, and most of the ties sized how they should be (in this case, long enough that the 2 end studs are usable on every tie unless they overlap the one diagonal tie). The remaining gap is where the switch is operated, so it's going to be 3*8 studs with a slot in the middle. I still need to remove a bunch of studs, add a switch mechanism, and add guards for the frog area. All seems feasible with the tools I already understand though. Took a while to find a process that would let me generate variable-length ties with correct integer lengths but it appears to be operational.

I didn't take it apart myself, just got it this way (without the brick) but it should just pull out. I don't know how much force it takes. I guess the ridge clips into something. (modern wheel/tire for scale - it sticks nearly 2 studs into the brick) It slides freely through the wheel, I just put it in to show size.

Bit of a throwback question, but I've noticed that my vintage Technic has 2 sizes of part 2825 1x4 thin beam. The bigger size is 1 stud wide, the smaller one is a bit smaller, which seems to be the same size as other studless beams. Does anyone know when this changed? I would guess it's around 1995-97 when the other thin beams (1x3, 1x5) got added. The Light Bluish Gray one is from Surface Space Loader; other two are Light Gray: Also interesting to me that it's (c) 1992 on the new one, as the part was introduced in 1989 sets.

More of a test piece than broadly applicable, this is for changing which side of a larger gauge the narrower gauge rides on: In this example, it moves 4-stud narrow gauge inside 6-stud standard gauge over the course of 32 studs. It let me test several features of switch tracks - rails merging, guardrails, flat area for the flange to ride on - while being a smaller project. It's designed as a half-piece that you print 2 copies of, to cut down on the size of the printed piece. As before, it's parameterized, in this case you have 2 gauges (larger one as #Gauge, smaller as #DualGauge) and #TrackLen. There are practical problems with designing a dual-gauge switch, that are solved by having the moving point be on the shared rail, so that's one situation where you might use this. Unfortunately I don't see a good option in Onshape for creating the mirrored version of this part, so I'll probably end up creating two files, one where the narrow gauge shifts left, one where it shifts right. For now I only have this "leftward" one. I'll keep looking though, creating 2 versions of the actual switch file will be more tedious than managing it in this smaller design. The reason it's a problem is the rail end clips - if you simply mirror the whole design, they'll end up backwards. So parts have to be mirrored selectively. Another example to demonstrate parameterization - this is 5 gauge with 4 gauge inside, over 16 studs (which makes it R64 curves - don't worry, the CAD does the math for you). Sort of ends up being oddly shaped, in that the rails end right at the split between the pieces, so maybe it's worth designing a version that doesn't split there. And a 3-rail curve - the extra parameter #DualInset says how many studs from the inner curve rail the third track is. So for 4+6 stud gauges, you set it to 3 or 2, depending whether you want the narrow gauge to run on the inside or outside of the curve. Though the real point is things like this example, with 5.3 and 7 stud gauge, where there's no off the shelf piece available that does this. Less than 1 stud gap may cause collisions, and likely doesn't work with Lego train wheels anyway.

I have some Classic theme 'googly eyes' that I might swap into the Anglia, if I see it for a good deal (assuming it'll be $80+US msrp). Not sure about the mouths, maybe there's a classic 1x2 tile with smiling/frowning mouth (11031 monkey fun, but only medium nougat)? I don't actually hate the printed tiles it comes with, I just think googly eyes are funnier.

I tried rebuilding it in Studio, minus the 60 degree "K" connectors (doesn't have them yet) so I put #5s in their place but I only managed to get 82/83 parts: All the half-bushes are speculative as they're not visible, and I didn't build anything for brakelights. The quarter-ellipse is perfect for old car trunks. No new parts/colours from what Studio reports, but this is a tiny set to get the set of V-engine pieces.