Blakbird

Magnificent! This beast is going to be a glorious MOC. Don't strain your back moving it around.

8285 in 2006 had minimal pneumatics.

This is a fantastic MOC. Keep up the good work. I've always loved the models which combine the aesthetics of Model Team with the functionality of Technic, and that appears to be exactly what you've done here. I look forward to watching the progress and seeing the completed model.

True, but the bed or 5th wheel are optional. I couldn't find a photo of one with all of the same options. And you are right about the history of LEGO engines. The venerable 5571 had a V-8, though the truck it represented almost certainly did not. 8285 and 8868 actually did have a 6 cylinder engine, but it was a V rather than an inline. I've seen very few LEGO inline engines. 8455 has an inline 3. The very first auto chassis, 853, had an inline 4, as does the 8284 tractor. The 8847 dragster had a very odd inline 2 disguised as a V-8. The 8859 tractor also had an inline 2. Pretty well everything else was either a single cylinder or a V. There were a couple which were horizontally opposed (boxer). In this particular case, the fact that you actually can get the Scania R series with a V-8 made me think it was a pretty good fit.

Speaking of the real vehicle, I've been doing some research. The link I provided shows a Volvo truck which is pretty similar, but I think the closest match based on styling is a Scania R 620 8x4. This is the only model with a V-8, and 8258 clearly has a V-8.

There's a new folder on Brickshelf with images of the new 8258 truck. Some of these are repeats, but some of them are images I had not seen before: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=387752

This sounds pretty cool to me. Is it too late to sign up? I've written quite a few review already.

Yes, I own all the Technic sets and they are all built and on display at my home. See this Brickshelf page for some shots of part of my collection. Yes, indeed it can become very tedious, so I guess that this reveals that I have some sort of mental problem. This comes as a surprise to no one. However, my deficiencies are your gain! If you have recently emerged from your dark ages, let my own example be a warning to you. This LEGO thing can really get out hand!

Wow, I'm impressed. You had to be looking at the web site pretty closely to find something like that! 8285 actually shouldn't be linked to anything at all because I haven't written about that set yet. How the link to 857 got there is a bit of a mystery. Chances are that I originally made the tow truck page by copying and modifying the motorcycles page. This would make sense since 857 is in the same position there. At any rate, I'll fix it in the next revision. I hope this egregious error does not scare you away from Technicopedia in the future.

Sadly, I have a number of sets which are this bad including the Silver Champion and the Ferrari F-1 1:8. This stickers from this era are of incredibly bad quality. As I mentioned, those from the Blockade Runner literally disintegrated. They fell into pieces less than 1mm x 1mm.

That's a very good idea, and one of the things which I was considering. However, since my stickers are already destroyed, it's too late to do such a thing. I don't suppose you have a nice TIFF of the 8461 sticker sheet?

I've had an endless array of issues with stickers as well. For instance, look at these heartbreaking pictures of my Williams F-1 Racer: This happened within a couple of months. It is easy to recommend just getting another sticker sheet, but for a set like this the stickers alone can be $75. Blue and white seem to be the worst, as you can see. The white stickers on my UCS Blockade Runner have completely disintegrated. My 1:8 F-1 Ferrari is peeling too, but only the white. The red seems OK. On sets like this Williams racer, the stickers are a huge part of the look of the model and now it just looks awful. I have sets that are 30 years old with stickers which are fine. The crappiness seems limited to a few years in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Sets from this era with black stickers seem to have no problem. The real oddity is that I store my LEGO in a room with no outside light, so UV should really not be an issue. Yet the issue is clearly related to light because I found that the side which faced the wall looked much better. You can bet that if I ever get my hands on another sticker sheet for the Williams car, I will be putting a clear coat of polyurethane on it. I've considered making my own set of stickers by tracing the original in a vector graphics program, but so far I have not had time.

Interesting that you've had so much trouble with the micro motors. Mine have all been completely fine, at least in Technic sets. At one point the one in the UFO set (6979) wouldn't work, but I banged it on the table and it fired right up again! I think perhaps the contacts just get dirty after sitting around for a long time. I guess that just means you need to use them more often.

Yes, it's finally true. At long last I have uploaded another update to Technicopedia. Thanks again to Berndasbrot for providing various ldraw models for 1993, and to Owen Dive for providing some older models for rendering. I have now added the sets from 1993 to Technicopedia including 8022, 8042, 8082, 8818, 8824, 8857, and 8872. There's some good sets here; I hope you enjoy it.

Hmm, what is this colleague's area of expertise? From my own experience, I would tend not to agree. I've recently built Jennifer Clark's JCB JS220 excavator. In this model, the compressor is in the remote controller. The compressor is powered by 2-9V motors (geared, lightweight type) and uses 4 pneumatic compressor cylinders at full stroke. This should be plenty of pressure and flow to do any LEGO job quickly. However, I am using about an 8 foot umbilical as well as quite a few splice connections using rigid tubing. I find that the head loss in the tubing is a bigger factor than the actual air supply. This does not make a significant difference in total delivered pressure, but it does make a difference in the rate at which it can be transferred. Therefore, I think that if 6 air tanks were placed in series, you'd still have a problem with losses in the tiny lines in-between. I'd suggest a solution more like a RAID disc system and put the 6 tanks in parallel. Same storage capacity, but more capability to deliver the pressure. Of course, you still need to get the air to your model somehow....

The wedge belt wheels you are using for cranks appear in the photographs to be chromed. How did you manage this? Or am I just seeing it wrong?

Interesting. As you know, I've built that same MOC. What you may not know is that mine also fell from a great height. I had it sitting on top of a refrigerator box my kids were using a playhouse. One of them bumped the box pretty hard and it fell off onto the floor. The only damage was one broken #5 angle connector.

Well, if you actually want the rotor to produce noticeable lift, you have 4 choices: Increase the rotation rate of the main axle. Obviously this comes with it's own problems and will require a lot of power. Decrease the weight of the blades. This will serve only to make the tips lift easier, but will not actually improve the lifting power of the heli as a whole. Increase the pitch of the collective. The lift coefficient increases with angle of attack, but only to the point of stall. Flat plates (or LEGO plates with bumps all over them) stall at a pretty small angle and then you actually lose lift. This leads me into the 4th option. Give the rotors and airfoil cross section. This will decrease drag and increase lift. It will also allow you to achieve a much higher pitch angle before stall occurs. Ideally you want a rounded leading edge and a sharp trailing edge. The trick is that you'd have to be able to accomplish this profiling without adding significant weight or the whole thing is pointless. But it sounds like you are up for a challenge! Seems like a studless beam on edge could make a good strong leading edge, and also provide the thickest point at about the 1/4 chord point. You'll want the trailing edge to be as smooth as possible to prevent flow separation. I look forward to copying you when you have worked it out.

Yes, in the last couple of years LEGO has backtracked a little bit on the studless thing. I think this is largely in response to feedback from the AFOL community who were afraid that the traditional "studded" beams were going away altogether. The models are still primarily studless, but there are a few beams thrown in here and there. I'm hoping to see the same kind of response to the concerns over the disappearance of pneumatics with the introduction of the linear actuators. I think both have a place in modern building.

That's a highly subjective question since studless parts were introduced very gradually over a long number of years. The first part that I would call "studless" in that it has no studs and is still used in current design would be the 1x4 liftarm which started in 1989. Next would be the triangle in 1991. But these were just individual parts, the overall design was still highly "studded" and these new parts were typically hidden deep inside. By 1998 there was a significant amount of hybridization. Consider 8462 which was still studded, but had quite a number of liftarms as well. By 1999 with the Super Street Sensation, LEGO had settled on a happy medium where the frame was built from traditional bricks but the body was built from panels and liftarms. This continued for a few years with many good examples including the Silver Champion. By contrast, the 8674 Ferrari F-1, which appears very similar at first glance, is almost entirely studless. I would say 2003 was the first year that the current building method really took hold. All models of this year had virtually no studs and were built from the inside-out instead of from the bottom-up. 8455 is a great example. I hope that helps!

Kind of like NASA's attempt to do "faster, better, cheaper", it turns out you can't have all three. "Good, big, cheap" -- you'll have to pick two. If you want big and cheap, I'd recommend 8277. Has loads of long beams, the models are giant, and it wasn't very popular and is therefore cheap. If you want big and good, 8480, 8868, 8862, and 8880 are the best. If you want good and cheap, consider a smaller set like 8838. Feel free to look over the photos and descriptions on my website if you don't know what all of them are.

Hmm. I guess that helps a little. I'll make you a deal. You bring your truck over to my house. You can stare at my collection whilst I stare at your truck. Then we'll both be happy! By my calculations it is only about 5,000 miles if you take the convenient polar route. Better start walking.

Lasse, you need to quit being so awesome because it is making me feel inferior and depressed. I recommend posting a topic that is a complete catastrophe. That should make the rest of us feel better. Nice truck though.

You can always make your own u-joint. There are a number of examples on Brickshelf. Otherwise you can devise something more like a CV joint by using the double bevel gears as joints. Since they can act as both spur and bevel gears, you can vary the angle between them. There's also the ball gear from the helicopter cyclic which was used on the 8880 wheels. Really though, an open cruciform section has about the worst torsional strength imaginable. Add to that the fact that the axles are made of plastic and you have something which was really not designed to transmit high torque (hence the existence of the clutch gear). Even if the axle or u-joint doesn't break, you'll snap teeth off of gears. Still, some people have made large scale powered cars. Check out this for example.

My previous review shows this model next to a couple of others. You should be familiar with the small wheels for comparison. If you still would like a minifig for scale picture: This is pretty big for minifig scale, but I guess huge depends on your frame of reference.