Blakbird

The standard geometry of an automotive chassis (parallel longitudinal rails, 4-5 lateral cross members) has excellent rigidity in bending but very poor rigidity in torsion. This is much worse in studless models because the torsional shear all has to be transferred through pins which have some play in them. The best way to improve torsional rigidity in this type of structure is to add a shear web. With a studded model, this is as simple as adding a couple of plates between the rails. Note that these can't be 1x plates because they can rotate at the ends. The plates must be at least 2x. The wider the better. For a studless model, this type of reinforcement is impossible. Therefore, the next best thing is to add diagonal members. If you can create an "X" between the rails of your chassis and support the X in a way that the ends can't move, it will make a massive difference. Most official LEGO models do not do this and therefore the chassis can be very springy. The 8041 racing truck is an excellent example of a model that does NOT reinforce the chassis and stiffness suffers. 8258, 8285, and 8436 are other examples. Compare this to 8868 which is like a brick by comparison. Most modern cars don't even have a chassis. The body forms part of the structure of the shell, including the roof. This is why convertibles tend to be heavier because using only the lower for frame for stiffness is much harder. Trucks still have an old style frame and you will almost always find diagonal bracing.

Luckily for you, someone has already done this project! See this post. I'm sure Richard would be willing to help you. As for your specific design questions, Jennifer has some LDraw files on her web page that you can download. They are not complete, but they contain a good chunk of the chassis and should answer most of your questions. Here is what I have cobbled together from the available files. I added the flexible parts with the intention of making a render of this model.

I am going to try to pick one up when I am in England next week and bring it back with me.

Not much. I'm struggling to find ways to advertise it. Of course, it has been blogged on TechnicBricks which was a big deal, but we'd love to appear on some other blogs as well. I just don't have time to promote it via eBay at the moment. Those things are all reasons for low sales in general, but they are not unique to the USA. I would think that actual intelligence averages would be pretty constant all around the world. I don't think it is a matter of lack of intelligence in the USA, I think it is lack of interest. For some reason students in the USA are not interested in mechanical things any more. The smart kids are more likely to go into electronics or programming rather than gears and engines. Obviously it was not always so. Anyway, sorry to sidetrack the topic. I'm not trying to start a big discussion about the lack of engineers in the USA, I just thought it was an interesting observation that we have literally zero sales from the USA.

Correct! Netherlands has more than twice as many sales as any other country.

Well, the results are in and my long-time suspicions have been confirmed. People from the USA do not like Technic. So far, people from the following countries have purchased JS220 instructions. You will see that USA is not on the list. I knew it was less popular in the USA than elsewhere, but I expected at least one! My other big surprise was that I always thought Germany was the most popular place for Technic, but they are not on the list either. Maybe they don't read Eurobricks..... Can you guess which of the countries below had the most copies? Denmark France Netherlands Spain Switzerland UK

Yes, they are the same size. You can see them near eachother in my LEGO room photos.

Very nice! This is obviously a mod of the 857 motorcycle. They did an excellent job with the custom work.

Yes there is no doubt that collecting the parts for a moc from scratch is a pain and I share your wish that there was a better way. There has never been a MOC I reproduced that took less than 10 Bricklink orders to complete. This one was no exception. I don't recall it being any more difficult than any of the other models though. If you have a large collection of new sets, then it is true that they won't be of much use in building this particular model. But in terms of acquiring the parts from scratch, it is about the same difficulty as other models. By way of comparison, I had much more trouble getting the parts for Jurgen's excavator because of some of the rare orange parts.

That will be an interesting problem. A big portion of the reason this model got so many votes is exactly because of how complex it is. Dumbing it down removes much of the incentive for buying it. If it was just a 9398 with a different body then it misses the point. When this gets to 10,000' I hope they try really hard to keep it as close to the design as possible. It is especially important to save the transmission. Of course, we know that they can't keep the Land Rover body because of licensing issues.

That's true. The pictorial parts list in the instructions shows the flexible parts and approximately how much you need. They weren't put in the Brickstore file because Brickstore makes you specify which lengths you want, but there are a wide variety of lengths you could acquire that would work. I actually used quite a bit of aftermarket tubing for the umbilical since it is nearly impossible to get that much LEGO tubing. And of course, you can make the umbilical as long as you like as long as you also have wires that long. I've attached a sample from the pictorial parts list that shows some of the flexible parts needed. This is for the excavator. Some more tubing is needed for the controller. I think the Brickstore file does have all the right wire lengths listed.

I'm not sure what the problem is. There are still plenty of these parts on Bricklink. The model is mostly reglular plates and bricks which are quite common. The motors and pneumatics are still available in quantity.

I think the reason people voted for the 6090 instead of the car is not because the 6090 is a better model but because it is more unusual. There are a lot of super cars out there, but there are very few front shovels. Both are excellent models though. Good luck with the instructions! It is a lot of work and I hope it goes well for you.

They are all excellent models but if I had to pick only one to build it would be the 6090.

Other than the fact that they are the same size, there is really no comparison between the two. The rechargeable pack has vastly more capacity and puts out vastly more current. However, the AAA box is cheaper and will work in a pinch.

I suppose I should interject a few thoughts. This was a huge project. The CAD work was difficult in the first place not only because this is a complex model but because there are so many pneumatic hoses and wires. This presents a modeling challenge and a challenge in making the instructions understandable. This project was originally intended to be a book. This means that there is a lot more to this instruction file than just instructions. There are 40 pages of introductory material which walk the reader through the function of the real excavator and the ways in which this model was designed to replicate the same look and functionality. The instruction steps themselves were done in small understandable pieces which resulted in a lot of steps. Also because it was intended to be printed, the whole thing was rendered at 600dpi which it turns out is a lot more work than just changing the resolution level in LPub. Not blasphemy, but pneumatics are part of the charm of this model. If you want a mechanical excavator, there are other options out there including the official set 8043. Of course, this model has 4 motors and requires a transmission to motorize all the functions. Jurgen Krooshoop's orange excavator has all the functions motorized simultaneously, but he puts two motors out of the boom to accomplish this. I think what makes this so interesting is that it is an old school studded model using pneumatics. I have brought it to a couple of events and I can guarantee that it draws a lot of attention due to its realism. I'd have to say no. The superstructure is extremely dense with structure and function. There are 3 motors in there (skid steer and slew) as well as a 9V battery box. This completely fills the internal volume. Remember that the pneumatic actuating system doesn't require any additional space except for a few hoses. The compressor houses 4 pumps to produce enough air flow rate and an additional 2 motors. This compressor is almost as big as the superstructure again. Adding servos and a compressor to the model would double the size. Of course you could build an excavator in a more modern building style, and plenty of people have. Other than the pneumatics, nothing is particularly rare here though. It would be simple enough to switch over to the new round pneumatics instead of the old ones with the square bases. It also would be relatively simple to switch to the new tracks. I'm interested to see how people mod it to overcome these rarities. Well, if sales of this go well it just might be possible that more of Jennifer's models could be available in the near future..... I'm very interested to hear what people who have bought the instructions think of them. Please give us some feedback! We worked really hard and would like to know if it was all worth it. I'm including a couple of sample pages from the instructions, massively scaled down of course.

Keep in mind that LEGO did not conceive of this vehicle. This is a model of a real tractor pull vehicle, and they really have that many engines. Of course, on the real mode they are all V-8s, but 4 cylinders were necessary for this scale. And the steering on the real thing is also useless since the front wheels are never on the ground, so it is actually accurate!

You are correct, I think he has me beat. I have most of them, but I don't have Skyliner's Vector (yet), and I have not built the Countach in white (I'm still waiting for orange). A couple of others I have built that I would highly recommend are Erik Leppen's Pagani Zonda and Bughatti EB110. I would love to have made Sariel's Ford GT and Charger, but alas there were no instructions and I didn't quite have the skill to duplicate them from the available material. I'd be interested to hear if people feel that RoscoPC's F1 cars fall into the category of supercars. They are all Model Team on the outside, but on the inside they have as much Technicy goodness as any of these.

You and everyone else! You will already find that even the common sizes and colors command a premium price on Bricklink. The 16L beams are in particularly high demand.

At a LEGO fan event open forum, I once asked a LEGO employee why they had made such a drastic change from studded to studless building, and whether or not we might ever see more of the old beams reappear (this was not long after 8421 came out and I was glad to see so many old beams in it). His reply was that the old beams are gone for good and that the reason for the change is that the new studless parts integrate better with the rest of the LEGO system. This answer made no sense to me at all since it seems obvious that studded beams integrate better with the rest of the system and, like you say, studless building is a completely different paradigm than the rest of LEGO building. At any rate, like it or not, studless is here to stay and the old parts are not likely to come back. I personally like studless parts when used correctly and they have many advantages. However, I pine for the days when the two systems were mixed evenly and both were used for their strengths, so to speak.

They are both big,heavy cars running on a single XL motor, so they really only work on smooth level surfaces. So at a LEGO fan event they work great. Like anything with motorized steering, it is hard to make them go straight. If they could be retrofit with the new servo motor that issue would be solved.

I too am hoping for an eventual proper proportional R/C control for vehicles. The reasons for I/R over radio have been discussed before. The likely reason is that radio frequencies are heavily regulated and the regulations vary greatly from country to country. It would be difficult for LEGO to make a toy grade radio transmitter that would be legal all over the world.

2 of the 9 are motorized: Brabham BT52 and Ferrari 126C2. Both use the Li-Po rechargeable battery and a single IR receiver.

I'm not sure I could choose one. I have different favorites for different reasons. My favorite among the real cars is the Lotus 43, so that model is special to me. I really like the Brabham BT52 because of how unique it is. The fan car of course is really cool. Mechanically, I love the Tyrrell front suspension and steering. I like the McLaren for how smooth he was able to make it and the two-tone colors. Your best bet is to build them all!

The instructions are complete. They will be available through MOCPlans when the site is unveiled.