Stereo

They have a premium feature that swaps colours in a MOC for you, I haven't tried it so I don't know how applicable it is to these sets with 2 versions.

That one's wrong, it's never been released in this mold version. the previous mold 41669 was in sets in 2019.

I did find mixing both those parts in dark blue a bit annoying in the Ford GT, though that's a worse colour for instructions. The 'standard' of using black for pin-pinhole and dbg for axle-pinhole helps with that.

I've reverse engineered a mid-size model ~700 pieces, but it was classic Technic style, everything visible, and I only did it cause there were no instructions available.

I think the engine's at least 6 studs wide (4 of those are cylinder blocks, something is in between them), gonna be interesting to get a more detailed view of what they actually did. The axle on the other side of the cylinder is probably a 4L with stop inserted from each side, so that handles stability fine, the pins just maintain the angle.

MGU-H is an electric motor attached to the turbocharger, when it's in "generate" mode it slows down the turbo to charge the batteries. It can also use "motor" mode to speed up the turbo if that's necessary. Turbochargers aren't actually geared to the engine, they work on exhaust gas. So it's 2 separate features of the model - a 2 speed gearbox (looks like 16:16 and 20:12) and a MGU-H that spins with the engine. I believe the MGU-H is represented by the medium azure 12T gear and small Technic wheels that sit in the V of the engine.

Yeah, it's a clip with a stud on it (or stud with a clip under it, however you want to look at it), the Botanicals that got announced for January are using it too. I think the ends of the wing are normal 1x2 panels, they're just offset half a plate outward using SNOT tricks. The blue circle in Bartolomiej's post is a buildable figure finger, 3171.

It's how the actual car is, blue nuts on the right side, dk grey on the left, since they have opposite threads and can't be mixed up.

Looks like the same piston size as ever, at first I thought it was just upside down cylinders but maybe it's a new mold without studs on top.

I have some '80s Duplo and there are some pretty noticeable changes to the underside of the bricks, one kind (I believe older, maybe 1985) has no dimple on the top of the brick, and no rough texture on the underside. DUPLO(R) LEGO A/S Interlego AG 20 5 the other (nearer 1990) has a ~6mm dimple on the top for the injection point, and a rough texture on the underside. 3437 33-4 (both are 2x2 bricks; 20 5 and 33-4 would be mold identifiers) I'm just basing the guess on the fonts used, the one I'm considering 'older' looks like they got hand-stamped into the mold, the 'newer' one looks machine placed. I know my newest Duplo is from around 1990-1991, the older is from my 5 year older cousins so probably not older than 1982 or so. I didn't see your photos when I initially wrote my reply; these are like your blue and yellow ones for the most part, though not identical as there's no "LEGO Group" on the one with 3437 on it.

It looks like a 28 tooth gear to me, so 8 would be 90 degrees apart and then it has a 9th one.

I did compare them, but not scientifically. They are worse than regular metal axle wheels (coast about half as far after a 1 plate/16 stud slope) but still better than all-plastic ones. They also bounce up and down a bit since the hole in the middle is loose. The locomotive has the engine in the front so it sometimes slips pulling 2 of them on complicated track like multiple switches, would be better if it was under the battery box. With original Lego wheels it hasn't slipped but I've run it less configured that way.

I 3d printed smaller wheels a while ago but I wasn't entirely happy with them so I didn't get around to writing about them. The problem mostly boils down to the 2mm hole used by RC train bogie axles being way too precise for the type of printing I used. And then the parts are soft & the hole so small that my drill press can't clamp them or really deal with the delicacy of it. So I ended up drilling them out to size by hand, and the drillbit didn't make clean holes. Maybe catching on the layers or just not meant to drill into plastic? So they ended up a bit loose by the time the axle was able to go into them straight. Thus the flanges can get closer together than on the original wheels, and so in the right circumstances these wheels drop between the rails on corners. I think the correct solution for this 3d printing quality is to design the wheels to be about a millimetre wider gauge than the originals. So the pin on the outside of the wheel needs to be shorter, and the hole can be shallower. The original wheels have quite a bit of side to side play within the track, so removing this play won't be an issue if a wheel happens to have a well-fitting hole. Nonetheless, they work well enough to do laps around my layout. I actually printed two sizes; 1/2 plate smaller radius (1 plate lower diameter) and 1 plate smaller radius. These are the 1/2 plate kind, which I didn't end up needing as the smaller ones rolled okay, so I had a handful around to photograph. The roundness is good, but angled surfaces which are unavoidable on train wheels make the prints a bit ugly. I included a 6mm hex shape on the backside to help with fixturing them for sanding smooth, but it turned out this is the side that needed work so it didn't help. Difference in height from new wheels (left) and original wheels (right) - it's really not as noticeable once the whole train's been converted, but put like this I think it explains itself fine. The stairs are now less than half a plate above the rails. I think they look fine in the original wheel parts, it just makes the trucks look longer, they don't look out of place. It took me a little while to rebuild the locomotive lower so I didn't match photos all that well; here is the "before". And here is "after" with the spacer layer removed from the locomotive. Overall I'd say it accomplished my goal of improving the vertical proportions, but it was only necessary in the first place because of the ways I wanted the F40PH livery to be accurate - it would be a lot more sensible to just build the black and yellow stripes a plate higher, with this shorter locomotive design, and leave the cars running on original Lego wheels. Sticking to original Lego 6 wide sizes makes it wrong in a familiar way so it doesn't really stand out. The gap between the front end of the locomotive and the buffer is still bad, consequence of not using a train base. The locomotive is 27 long plus 3 studs of diagonal parts, so it'd need a tiny stretch to use a 28 base. I have higher resolutions on some of the images at https://bricksafe.com/pages/Stereog/agawa-canyon-tour-train

I don't mind sponsored reviews in general cause sometimes it's the only way to get an interesting product in front of the audience for it. But for Lego I'm just not going to watch them, I already know Lego's general position in the market.

It's the hub, but the distance from the point it rotates (upper/lower balljoints or pins) to the point the steering connects to it. The regular hubs usually use a balljoint in the pinhole and axle hole which are 2 studs apart. Though of course you can build out other distances. sin(1)*2 studs is the lateral distance that ball moves in 1 degree of steering, yes.

Usually they're quoted as a ratio of steering wheel rotation to tire rotation (roughly 10:1), so you can convert to that by figuring out the proportion of teeth on the steering rack to degrees at the tire. Just as an example, if you have a 2 stud steering arm, which is pretty common, sin(1 degree)*2 studs = 0.035 studs, steering racks have 0.4 stud teeth, so if you had a 12 tooth gear on the rack, 1 tooth is 30 degrees and moves the tire 11.4 degrees (0.4/0.035), which is around 2.7:1 ratio already. To go up to typical 10:1, 12:1 type thing you'll see in cars, you need another 4:1 gear reduction.

I would guess the original design's axle is also optional in real life, as long as the left and right drivers are paired properly, 90 degrees different on the same axle. I'm not sure if all 3 rows of drivers need to be connected; I suppose I can test that for myself. On actual 6 or more driver trains, the side rods have a pivot so the suspension can work.

I liked the Friends botanical gardens, but actually look at them side by side and this new one has so much more architectural detail. Like I think it's pretty noticeable what the extra money gets, and 2x or 3x set MOCs can't reproduce that cause they don't have all the greebling parts, they just get larger. It's a little odd that they did them in identical colour scheme though.

Older part, but 1x4 Technic plate with holes on both ends could have a stud pressed into the back layer 7L beam and not need modifications. So then I guess it's cheaper vs. no modification.

I pulled one out and it's a 3 piece assembly, the dark bluish grey plastic housing, a metal axle roughly 2mm diameter x 27mm, and the flywheel riding on that. I can't see a way to take it apart without damaging the plastic part. One side has a ~25mm opening with slopes leading into the axle's hole so it would need to stretch a couple mm sideways. It is 8 gearteeth and they're smaller than regular Lego ones. Maybe with the right sharp wedge you could push the end of the axle from the topside and lever it out, but it would need an extremely specific shape of tip as the slot it fits into isn't much more than 2mm wide. This is the underside of the part, Bricklink shows the holes in the topside. I kinda think the best bet is using some pliers to spread the top "U" of plastic, if you have some that can fit between the wheel and the housing, or maybe into the holes where the 'ripcord' is supposed to go. I doubt it has enough mass to be a useful flywheel on LPE, I traditionally used the old motorcycle tire which has a much larger radius and more mass, and even that had to be geared up 20x to do much. Which already has a fair amount of backlash in the gears.

Oh, I got confused by the names again. "stone" is the darker desaturated, "sand" is the lighter desaturated colours. Just based on the rows. Looking again yours has 'brick' for the dark ones and I think Lego sometimes calls them 'earth' (though iirc Dark Green is Earth Green and Green is Dark Green, officially?) I can see the argument that Dark Orange is fully saturated, with Reddish Brown being the same colour even darker and also saturated. So maybe what I'd have is Dark Brown, Reddish Brown, Dark Orange, Reddish Orange, Orange, as a stack above the 'bright'. And then align the other colours based on that, since none of them have so many shades.

I'd probably put teal and medium azure in different columns, I'm not sure if dark azure is closer to that or blue though. I agree on adding desaturated red, other than that I'd like something between Blue and Dark Blue, though maybe if I had enough Dark Azure in my collection I could be convinced that Blue already fits that space. I just don't feel like "royal blue" is quite present, dark blue is too dark. I think I'd maybe argue that Reddish Brown, Dark Purple, Dark Red, and Dark Orange are in an intermediate 'dark' while Dark Brown, Dark Green, and Dark Blue are the next step that way. Dark orange is really more in the stone orange class though, while medium nougat is stone brown.

I might say your left "light purple" is magenta but it's hard to be sure just from a photo. The light blue bricks are probably the same colour, just variation or yellowing.

I imagine the difference is it uses black 7L beams instead of pairs of 6s, so they stick out behind the rear tires. The rest seems visibly correct although the position of the wheels on the polybag photo is kinda weird.

Looks like a #1 connector (32013) and also the black 3x5 L is alternating holes kind, so a blue or tan axle-pin can connect them (and also the worm can go into it). How close are you to the 52 pieces? [edit] I thought it was 15100, but now I see it's 27940 pinhole with axles on both sides at the bottom rear of the cab, so it can connect to the alternating L with a regular 3L technic pin (2 pin, 1 axle)