Lipko

What a lucky situation. I've just started a crawler (or a vehicle that also has crawling abilities), I think I'll enter the contest.

It isn1t a real car but physics applies to it anyway. Rubber has high friction. Many Lego carts have this "problem", I guess 8110 is significantly heavier than those, that's the cause. What I'm trying to say: too much "optimizing" of the steering may damage Lego parts. Maybe I'm wrong though, it would be good to hear other opinions.

Never ever steer when the car is standing. Every car driver should know that. Really, the biggest cause of the hard steering is the friction of the tires. Today, we are too used to modern servo steering cars that's why we don't notice how hard is to turn the steering wheel on a standing car (and how damaging that can be for the steering linkage)

That's beautiful. I will look for other stuff on the net, there wasn't much Hummers in that scale 2-3 months ago.

Hi all! The topic will be a bit strange. I'm thinking about making a Hummer/Humvee supercar with the Unimog wheels for about three months now. I will buy the Unimog in about three weeks, but I wanted to make a WIP thread about it, because I see more and more people "discovering" how awesome the Unimog wheels are for trucks like Hummer, and I'm pretty sure sooner or later someone else will make that Hummer. So I just wanted a thread about this original-for-me idea and about what features and solutions I want to implement for a bit of evidence (at least for myself) that I'm not just getting on some band-wagon with the project and not only copying features. The features and solutions are nothing really new, but may be interesting, and if someone else is overtaking me with them I would um..., you get the idea. So the features: I want it RC, but not fully RC. Steering and going, but maybe not more. Independent wishbone suspension with the Unimog portal axle hubs. It's something that tickles my brain for months now, I wonder why I haven't seen this here on Eurobricks yet. Suspension has all the realistic stuff: Ackermann, chamber angle, caster angle and toe. adjustable suspension: stiffness and travel. Stiff and short travel for on-road, stiff and long travel for high speed off-road, soft and long travel for rock crawling All the obvious drivetrain features (transmission with R, hi/low selection, maybe torque distribution selector, independent differential lock on all three diffs). Winch. They are integral part of the Hummers' face. I want to include a clutch for pulling the hook out by hand. Winch and suspension setting is motorized (maybe with one motor and a gearbox), but not RC. I want to experiment with the chassis: A semi-realistic ladder chassis, and the two main beams are made of 2x2 beams connected with pins and 2x2, or 2x3 studded plates. I don't know how it will look or perform. Modular design. Already late with that. That's it for now, I will soon try some things out. My biggest fear is that the Technic wishbone parts don't allow too much play for the ball-pin, so it won't be possible to build a fine working suspension without overly complex structure.

Electric motors are surprisingly simple machines. I'm sure we'd find same looking motors in the most expensive cars or in spacecraft too.

Simple solution: - shockabsorbers should be used more directly above the wheels (instead of the 45 degree to the back they are now) This may not be enough. Just try to observe the motions of the suspension without the shock absorbers. It should not be hard to find a point on the axle and a point on the chassis (on each side) whose distance is definitely and always changing if you actuate the suspension.

Love at first sight Orange is so much better than yellow for these machines

Hmm. That makes sense. The lower "layer" wants to make the axle rotate in the opposite direction than the upper "layer" if you try to push the axle in a lateral direction. But the image shows slightly bigger angle than your implementation. Does the angle only affect the backlash sensitivity of the suspension (backlash of the ball joints of the links)?

I am wondering this too. And another thing: how do you define the lateral position of the axles? Oh I see. There is still some unusual lateral forces on the shock absorbers though, but that's just a minor thing.

Many of us do want to be a "MOCstar". It's hard not to be demotivated in situations like this. I understand Thelonious monk, in a way, Zblj has stolen the glory (in a way, because sooner or later someone would have built a mini 9398 anyway). Not to be too offended though, getting away and removing post is not too mature. Thelonious monk should fight back and build better MOCs than Zblj. (I felt a few months ago that Sheepo "stole" "my idea". I wanted to make an amazing off-roader, and I still not dare to tell what brand. But he did it before me. Almost every stuff I wanted to make. And he got freakikng featured in newspapers!!!!111!1. How could I ever make anything noteworthy if I could only copy. That totally demotivated me. After 2 months of no building (mainly because no money at all to buy Legos), I back again and build something. Probably it will be dwarfed by Sheepos Land Rover, but whatever.)

I was a paper crafter in my teenage years, and I was pretty good at it. I did it totally on my own, I didn't have internet, I didn't even know this hobby is done by other people. It requires a lot of creativity and problem solving (in different ways than Lego MOCing), just like any inventing. All I got was: "You have defty hands" or "I wouldn't have the patience to do that". F*ck you. I never had defty hands and I was never patient. People who don't create stuff has no idea what it takes to create stuff. And they don't give a damn either.

Nice model

Holy sh*t! For some reason I thought this set will be a limited series set that I either can only get for a horrible prize or can't get at all in my country. Now I see it's all over in the shops, it's more available and cheaper than the Unimog. Going to get this.

You can also google it. As far as I know, the main advantages (in real vehicles) are its relative simplicity, the central big and strong tube so no strong and heavy chassis is needed, and a big advantage that it's modular. Because of the central tube and the non-existing chassis, trucks can easily be build with different wheel counts, wheel positions, steering etc. In Lego, I don't know. Maybe it's just a cultural thing, Tatra's are legendary trucks. But I prefer other suspensions, because with Lego, this suspension is not simple at all. And I think a live axle system performs much better.

I think the ladder thing should be red too. Maybe it's grey/metal on real trucks, but the ladder not having a definite, one-color sidebar doesn't look good in my opinion.

Very good instructions, looks professional! But you accidentally inserted steps 6-7 instead of steps 27-28 in the brickshelf gallery.

I made a similar suspension some time ago, although it was a double wishbone suspension, but with a huge overlap like this I-BEAM suspension. It also had steering with relatively big steering angle. It was a failure though, it was very weak and overly complex for actual application. Good work, I want to see this in your next desert racer

Lego uses rubber rings or chains instead of belts. I guess belts would be too special for general problems, because their length is fixed. By that I mean belts are used for solving common problems, and too many variations in length would be needed. Chains are expandable, so it's a flexible solution, rubber bands are elastic, and used in more special cases anyway. And both of them are compatible with the other Lego pieces (like gears, wheels, bushings) while belts would require special wheels. That's my guess

I also think this is the best MOC you've made, especially the mechanics. To be honest, your older MOCs had too much features for my taste, some of them were more eye candy features than really usable features. This model is very well balanced, all the functions are actually used and are achieved with elegant solutions. It shows that you are an engineer, not because of the functions, but the overall, very nicely engineered structure. The sequential gearbox is just great, something I wanted to make, but I put the idea on hold, because I thought it would be too big for a manually operated, non-remote-controlled supercar... It seems that it would actually fit, I don't know how big the controller-arm assembly is.

Yes, I know, that's why I suggested a more strict deadline, not one that can be adjusted 1-2-3 days before the advertised time-line :) Maybe weight (but how to judge?) without batteries is a better measurement, since size can be too restricting. What is someone wants to build a long but thin model? Or maybe judges should be so experienced, that they can judge by eye? Anyhoo, this contest was great indeed, the next one will be even better!

I agree with DLuders on the frontpage part (but not on the 2nd prize part ). I have suggestions, the first is a tricky one: 1. Size limit. I think not-limiting the size of the entries introduces unfairness to contests. Size does matter, especially in a public poll, where (as DLuders pointed out) the majority of the voters are not Technic builders. This contest proved that idea wins over size, but also proved that bigger size gives advantage to the builder, and two very creative stuff could only beat the big-guys. To be clear, I think the air-plane is a wonderful MOC, but it's too Big-gun MOC for a contest. It has more pieces than the total inventory of some builders (including me). It's easier to add many functions to a bigger model, and it's mere size was so impressive that it had considerable influence on the outcome (public voting comes in again). We had two impressive planes, the smaller with the less consistent color palette had no chance. Efferman's boat was very cool, but IMHO, apart from the very interesting propeller design and the fact it actually floated, there were more interesting models with more interesting features. 2. Please, be more strict with time-lines. 2-3 days is okay, but almost 2 weeks extra is too much. This would be the only drawback of building big models, and if there's no strict timeline, "nothing" will stop building over-sized-for-a-contest models. And that actually happened, the big plane was half-ready at the time-line. Other newbies and me probably didn't think that there will be this two extra weeks for building. If someone starts to build 2-3 weeks before the deadline, that two weeks can be crucial in deciding what to build. I would have built a different thing for example. Okay, maybe that's a personal problem... I don't know how to limit the size though, I think it's something we should discuss. Sorry for the lengthy post. Edit: another thing that may be important to discuss: importance of non-illegal techniques, and overall building techniques. Not some over-picky way, but at least to some extent. There was a (big-sized) winner (I call the first 6 winners) entry with a repeated impossible-to-disassemble construct for example. This might be nit-picking, but this would fall into the category of "structurally sound" building in my opinion.

Beautiful! I so can't wait for buying the Unimog, I'm planning a Humvee for a month now... Watching the pictures makes waiting even harder.

Well, it was just a quick idea. I was thinking about some on-line cooperation building of some sorts, where a big challenge is communication between the team members. Anyhoo, a thread was promised about comments on the TSTTS contest, where the whining should be placed (Because IMHO some issues with duels are present with contests too)

You should use soft suspension for slow rock-crawling, and hard for fast moving on terrain (like desert racers). So for a Tatra I would use soft suspension. I've found this link very useful: Modes of Travel, Ride Height, Suspension Height, & Wheel Travel