Stereo

If you had a bit of depth to work with you could combine the two, they need to be 1/2 plate different in height because the rail's 2 plates tall and the tile's 2.5 plates tall. And also a half-stud offset needs the jumpers. But it'd ensure your curve is consistent. It looks like when it's with an "outside" rail, the inner one is about 15.75 studs long for one curve. Fortunately 1x2 tiles are a tiny bit less than 2 studs long (0.1mm end tolerance) so it might actually work out that they fit together evenly. This isn't the shallowest way to build the 1/2 plate, just the easiest one for me to find parts for so I could mock it up, you can definitely do it in 2 plates height with the 3386.

I'm not sure about part 424, but the normal Lego way (sets like the Icons/Creator Expert cars) is 1x1 round plates - 6141 or 85861. You could check 10290's instructions as it uses the 3x3 dish.

No, I just couldn't find the hub pieces and that quarter ellipse has the same holes. It's the way the link is set up on the Defender.

To me bright light blue is the best fit for Gulf, but I think Lego already used medium azure in the speed champions ford GT. I think the actual colour's between those.

I don't see where the 3x1s are an issue from looking at the Defender, but I haven't tried building with those wheels. I guess to drive it you'd need a U-shaped rack to clear the differential. Should be the same behaviour as the 5 long ones, just with enough clearance to still be able to steer.

The Barcode Truck (8479) has a similar method where the rack is moved closer to the axle (so it's 1 stud ahead, the links are 2 studs ahead as standard). It does mean it uses square root link lengths of √5 (same build as your ellipse parts, 1 x 2 y on the grid) so it probably requires the new 2L link with towball/socket parts to put it on something with suspension. I don't know why they "discovered" the solution and then ignored it again, maybe space constraints on building a sturdy axle with the rack in that spot.

I wonder if you can put a regular 56mm tire (for 15038) on those moon rover wheel faces as well.

On modern sets those are easy cause black is the only one that gets a white outline, but dark brown, reddish brown, dark blue, dark green, dark bluish gray all look pretty much the same to me, totally black in some pdfs. Sometimes even hard to tell what piece it is, plain 1x2 brick vs. technic 1x2 or 1x2 with a stud on the side for example.

The earlier wires (pre-1995 or so) are also better - they have a glossy thinner insulation that holds up well, but is less flexible. So original 1990 trains (and earlier stuff with wires, like monorails and Technic) can have durable wiring. I expect most people who've encountered the bad kind of insulation can recognize it if you ask.

There are mold variations (one has a slot hole in the underside of the pin, one has I believe also a round hole) and they're different thicknesses vertically, could be that? They do have different part numbers on the underside but it's tiny text.

I see a 31025 b-model. And 42060, 42062. (orange Technic)

With the lack of trans-neon parts in the current palette, I'd rather one of the themes that doesn't use them much (Space Police 1 & 2, or the white/blue classic Space). The Blacktron 2 and Ice Planet CMF guys really didn't do it for me with lime and trans-orange.

Yeah, to the extent it stayed level, it's cause pieces were bigger in the 90s, I'd think. Or maybe put another way, sets didn't include the smaller pieces. Look at something like 6984 (406 pieces, 1992) and it has maybe 40 decorative exterior pieces, there are 17 tiles in the whole set. 10497 (1254 pieces, 2022) has 215 tiles. 10497 is larger, but maybe 125% the size, not 3x.

I'd guess the tools are in more of the bar-clips like the dish uses, in the red-orange L-piece's axle hole. Also it looks like there's a black pin in the top middle part of the L-piece. Which I'd guess is a pin-axle-axle. Possibly used for stability in some way, since using bar-clips means the top and bottom layers of the body aren't well connected. Although trying it IRL, the bar-clip inserts far enough to get maybe a 1/2 plate into the axle end of the 2x4 beam. I can't tell if that's a good enough connection for Lego.

Another sturdy one, that has colour problems: 6558 3L Technic pins are blue/black(/tan/lbg) 17485 2x2 round brick with pinholes are dark orange/dark brown/tan/black(/blue/lbg). 18674 2x2 round jumpers are reddish brown/dark tan/black(/blue/lbg). I suppose if you want to stack pipes instead of logs, you could go LBG, Blue or Black. Or a mix. I would probably build 2 of these facing opposite ways, to connect with axles in the usual fashion for stud inversion.

Yeah, I'd probably have 2 of these near the ends with the axles connecting the middle sections where the studs reverse, so there's not much "overhang" past the layer that uses tiles.

This is my first thought for how to make it happen that seems workable, though it leaves that one 1x1 round plate fairly visible. The geometry's about 0.025 studs overlapping so I don't know if the round bricks have enough built in side tolerance to allow it. I don't own any 5518s to test it. Third layer would have this repeat but pointing downwards to attach the middle 4 in a diamond, the outer 2 of the bottom layer can just be built into the deck the same way the middle is, probably. Instead of using all the quarter tiles, the old-style 2x2 round tiles can connect directly onto the half-circle jumpers, but I haven't checked if those have a wood print.

Some of my sets that I bought at the time had slimy rubber from new, ones I can think of offhand are 8479 (barcode truck, 1997), 8444 (air enforcer, 1999). It was specifically the hard rubber tires, parts 3483, 2346, 3634, 4288. It was noticeable immediately (compared to older sets with the same tires) and now 26+ years later the one on 8479 that's used for Hand of God steering is still slimy enough that it slips on the wheel instead of steering. When they were new I thought they were shipped in something like vaseline, but if I washed them it came back.

I believe that's the case in theory, it's just a worm drive inside it. There could potentially be friction differences though, since one will be under tension and the other compression so they'll be on different bearing faces. Compression should be an internal one, tension might be external (ish) where the orange axle goes into the body.

There's a bigger one I derived from that method, that might also be useful - 7, 4*sqrt(2), 9 (81-49=32) Sits very close to the 5-5-7 triangle (which is 46 degrees) actually.

I thought the point of the Z-link was to have this kind of 'automatic' change in bucket tilt as you raise it. If you just want the bucket to stay parallel to the ground then you'd just have a parallelogram linkage where one rotates the bars and the other moves the bottom corner of it.

The bent liftarms with a single bend use a 3-4-5 triangle external angle. Which is around 54 degrees. The double-bent ones do have 45 degree angles.

Interesting, that's one of my favourite $80-budget sets in the last decade, but I never saw who designed it. I'll probably wait for a discount of some sort on this one though, as despite being about the same size, it's not $80 price point anymore.

None of my baseplates have corners that sharp, but I guess the oldest ones I have are mid-80s.

Thought more about it and with a 2L clutch ring, a 12t clutch gear would actually sit on the 20t bevel that the rear diff uses. I'm not sure how the clutch toggle piece interacts with the new 2L clutch ring though. And I believe the old 2L clutch ring isn't compatible with new gears.