Blakbird

I know you weren't serious, but I have to reply anyway. Dimples (concave disturbances in the surface) help promote laminar airflow, reducing drag. Studs (convex protuberances) promote turbulent airflow, increasing drag. This thing would whistle like a banshee on the motorway.

Rocket powered Winnebago.

As soon as I saw this post, I figure you were talking about Luca Roscini (RoscoPC). His F-1 cars are the stuff of legend. See all of them at his Brickshelf page. I did a render of one of his McLaren models a long time ago:

80 frames. Each frame represents a rotation of 4.5 degrees. Each frame dwells for 0.05 seconds, so the total rotation time is 4 seconds, 15 rpm.

I had a request to do an animation of one of these cars doing a "doughnut" or a "cookie". This is basically a zero radius turn done by burning the back tires. I chose the Murcielago for this animation because it has the front wheels turned (and looks cool). I changed the rotation center from the geometric center of the model to the point between the front tires. I also lowered the camera and added a LOT more perspective so it looks like you are close to the car. For something like this, I also thought it would look better with a floor so I added a black, slightly reflective plane. Finally, I used a 3:1 aspect ratio. I think it turned out very well. I considered actually having the back tires spinning, but the frame rate of this animation is far too slow to really show anything, especially considering how fast burning tires would be spinning. If I really wanted to get fancy, I could blur the rear tires like I did to the rotor on this helicopter render, but doing 80 frames of that would take almost literally forever. Before anyone makes the comment, I'm aware that the Murcielago is all wheel drive and probably wouldn't spin this way like a rear wheel drive car. I guess the only way to be sure is for someone to try it!

I had not seen that before. Thanks very much for the link. I think that is the next CAD file I will create. I've LOVED Ming Thein's cars for a long time. However, he does not publish any kind of photographic building instructions or details of construction, so I have no way to duplicate one of those cars.

What can I say that hasn't already been said? This MOC goes on the list of the truly great, and that's a small list. I'd also like to point out that your level of presentation keeps getting better and better. The sliding titles which reflected in the chrome fuel tanks was genius, and I also see that you learned how to rack focus!

They hold their charge for a long time. Nickel Cadmium batteries lose their charge quite quickly, but Nickel Metal Hydride last longer. You should be able to leave them for a couple of months without worrying about it, although not as long as alkalines. Lithium Polymer batteries hold their charge almost indefinately, but have a much lower current capacity (and other hazards) compared with the other rechargeables.

I may have spelled it wrong. He didn't really design it to be any specific car, someone just told him it looked like an EB110. It actually have quite a few differences.

I can't decide if I want to do chrome wheels or not. I like that all 3 are a little different. The Murcielago uses chrome wheels, the Gallardo uses black wheels with custom hubs, and the Countach uses light gray. Actually, some gold or copper plated wheels would be fantastic here. You'll also notice that I made a couple of aesthetic customizations. Firstly, I changed the interior from white to tan and red and I made the dash dark grey. I just wanted to set off all that lack of color with something, and I like the way it turned out. Another subtle thing I did was replace all the blue. All the blue long friction pins are black, and all the blue axle pins are light gray. I think it looks better this way since the blue pins were distracting (but much easier to find). The easiest way to generate a parts list is to download the CAD file from my Brickshelf folder and then export the parts list from LDView. Otherwise, if you don't know how to do that, you can PM me and I can send you the Brickstore file with the inventory. I don't think I can upload it to Brickshelf. I was busy over the weekend and decided to do revolving animations for all of these cars, as well as most of the other MOCs I've built. Here are the ones from this thread: I think that Erik Leppen's Bughatti (which I just finished modeling) may be the next car in my future:

As requested, here are some pictures of all of the Lambo's, now with Skyliner's Countach present. Looks pretty good with the others I'd have to say.

Everyone can of course have their own opinion, but in MY opinion, that gearbox meets the criterion for "insane". That's a lot of gears. I love it. As a side note, I'm also amazed at how different the old and new grays look in this lighting. I always have trouble telling the difference between light gray and light bley on small parts.

This is not completely surprising. Every LEGO brick, including liftarms, is about 0.1mm smaller than the nominal size of a stud width. This is necessary to get parts to fit next to each other with a slight tolerance and not bind. In your design, you stacked up to 4 1/2 thickness liftarms to space out your gear from the differential, and in the case of LEGO math (4 * 1/2) < 2. So the gear is a little bit closer than if you had used a pair of full width liftarms, and even that would be a little closer than the frame because the frame contains even another 0.1mm compared to two liftarms to account for the space between them. Incidentally, you can validate this by measuring the cross section of a liftarm. You will see that it is NOT quite square. You can also measure the difference between the width and the space between axle holes.

True, that part was included in a single Technic set. Not exactly a Technic part, but I concede that it is all metal.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: This is a weird collection of features to motorize. I like this model very much, and I appreciate the gearbox. I don't mind that it switches functions instead of switching gears, and I understand that this is more interesting to kids. But why the motor? I would rather have turned a crank on this one and saved $50. The only times I really think motors are needed are for R/C models and for anything with a linear actuator. They are too painful to turn by hand, and yet most LA-enabled sets do not come with motors. Anyway, I'll still buy it of course.

Although the topic is of passing interest, I have a lot of LEGO projects I would rather be spending time on than tracking down sets which stress parts. I don't recall which sets off hand. But I do recall building some CAD files for Technicopedia and for renders of later models which had the same problem. I also remember noticing it in a few cases while rebuilding every Technic set over the last year. In any case, I don't think we need to spend any more bandwidth on the topic.

Understood. However, as I said earlier, several official LEGO models do the same thing. As I understand the definition of LEGO purism, anything that LEGO has done in an official set is acceptable.

Would you mind exporting to a LDR file? I have no skill with LDD and the few times I have tried to export someone's file it has gone very badly. If I could open this in LDraw tools, I'd like to take a closer look and do some renders of it.

I think not everyone would agree on that point. Whether or not parts are "bent" does not necessarily make a model good or bad, and even bad models may be purchased by some people, and some good models may be free. In my opinion, some of the very best models of all time require stressing of parts to assemble, including Jennifer Clark's JCB JS220 excavator. I do agree with you that I prefer not to damage parts or strain them if it is avoidable. But with only 22.5 degree increments of angle to work with and integral lengths of axles, it is just not possible to make perfect closed loops that are not square. Some people are fine with this fact, others are not. In any case, we're WAY off topic. I don't like criticizing people's MOCs, creations from their own imaginations. Skyliner made a model and took the time to make very detailed instructions. People can disagree on whether or not they like the MOC, and they can disagree on whether or not they would pay for it. But I don't think anyone should be saying a MOC doesn't deserve to be sold just because they don't like it. There's plenty of official LEGO models that I don't like, so I just don't buy them. That's not an indictment of the creator, those models are just not for me. To get back on topic, I'll be putting Skyliner's Countach on the shelf with my other cars, and I feel it deserves to be there. Thanks for creating it, Skyliner.

My point is that Skyliner is saying that the parts are not stressed, but yet people seem not to believe him. I'm saying that I'm going to build the model and then I will confirm whether or not the parts are stressed. Will people believe me? I don't know. Maybe some people just have to build it for themselves. I am hoping that people will accept that I'm being honest.

It's not an optical illusion, but it is an artifact of the difference between CAD and the real world. In real LEGO, there is a small amount of compliance and small gaps between parts. These aren't very big, but they are enough to allow small adjustments in alignment without forcing any parts. This is not possible in CAD. It is also not unique to MOCs. If you start building models in CAD, you'll see that a great number of even official LEGO sets do not have parts that all completely align when built in CAD. This is especially true of angle connectors. Many helicopter canopies are examples of this. If you want to judge the quality of the fit on Skyliner's model, you should look at his photographs of the real thing, not my renders. You won't see any of those gaps. Well, I'll be building the model within the next couple of weeks, so I guess I can put the matter to rest then, assuming that people will trust my word on the matter without proving it for themselves. On a more important note, now that we have good pictures of the Unimog from the toy fair, we can confirm that quite a number of orange liftarms and panels are now available. Now we simply need someone with some time on their hands to figure out if it would be possible to built the Countach in orange like the render if one had a large number of Unimogs and any other currently available source of orange parts. Skyliner, would you object if I posted a parts list of the orange parts which would be required? It seems that the angle connectors and flex hoses would be the hardest.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that anything is forced together. I built a CAD file of the whole thing and it all fits together in a perfectly normal fashion except for two liftarms on the rear window which are stressed. That's two out of 1300 parts. As for charging, no one has to buy it if they don't like it. Personally, I like it or I would not have spent so much time on it.

How? It is not electronic, it is a 200 page printed catalog.

No. That's the "Silver Sportscar", this simplest of Nathanael Kuipers' 3 alternate models of 8457. The next more complicated is the "GT Car". The most complicated (which is what we are discussing) is the "Supercar" which also requires the parts from 8466. NK never did full instructions for this, but somebody did, and they were posted in a thread here on Eurobricks.

Thanks David. That's actually not the Supercar instructions I was thinking of. Those instructions are by NK but they are only for the chassis. After he and I finished the CAD file, someone else posted PDF instructions of the whole thing. I never remember where that link is, but I have the file.