Blakbird

I might have them at home (I am at work right now). I'll try to remember to check this evening. As I recall, the instructions were available using a special computer program available from LEGO.

Like this?

I think you are right. The car was designed to be pushed and to have the wheels driving the engine, not vice versa. So I suppose that if you really wanted to motorize it, you'd put a motor at one or more of the wheels. The wheel speed would stay constant, but as you went through the gears the motor would change speed. The car would not actually drive, you would have to lift the wheels off the ground like the motor option on the 8448. If you were really designing a motorized LEGO car, you would optimize the gear system for the speed and power of the motor. Once you use a gearbox, you are guaranteed to have the motor either over or under driven bin some gears. 8448 got around this by lifting the wheels off the ground when motorized to remove most of the load from the motor. That way you can watch the wheels change speed but there is not much resistance. They really go fast in 5th gear!! I once saw pictures of two 8880 sets, one of which was built in red and the other in yellow. Here's a yellow one.

Outstanding review and set of pictures, Bernd, as usual. This is also one of my all time favorite sets. I also have two of them, one built as the car and one as the alternate F-1 racer. It is unusual for the alternate model to be so good as well. When I get to 1994 in Technicopedia, it is going to take me forever to document this thing. Luckily, I already have an MLCAD model of the whole thing. I bet there will be 1000 frames of animation! Anyone who votes anything other than "outstanding" in the poll is probably not qualified to participate in this forum.

I like this set so much that I have two of them. One is built into the helicopter and the other into the dinosaur. The first Control Center is also excellent. I'm almost done with the year 1990 for Technicopedia which will include it.

Great looking MLCAD model!! The pose is also very good (not just straight and symmetric). This must have been really difficult. I know what you mean about the legs. They change geometry significantly as the dinosaur lowers its torso. Someday you'll be able to see this when I get to animating it on Technicopedia!

The last time I actually added it all up, the replacement value of my collection was about $40,000. Yes, I do have a special provision on my home owner's insurance to cover it. It took a lot of explaining to the insurance agent to get them to understand that LEGO could be worth so much. Eric

Wow, that's a long exposure. I would think you would get way too much light and overexpose the image. The aperture must have been tiny. Cool. I am also planning to write about the combine on Technicopedia. Combine I thought that word sounded familiar! You don't own 8480? That is unacceptable. It is imperative that you put a mortgage on your house immediately to get it! *sweet* Yes, 8824 is a good white set. I also see from your room photos that you have the 8839 Supply Ship which has lots of white. This is a really nice set. 8462 is hard to call old school, but at least it uses regular beams. The air tanks are the best part of the set. I wish LEGO had used them more often, especially on the highly pneumatic sets. The tank makes all the difference on 8459. You are right, 8458 is certainly not old school, but it is a great set with wonderful suspension. It is of the same era as the Super Street Sensation with all of the panels for body contouring. 8868 is Technic at its best. There is nothing else like it, especially with the compressor. While the assembly you have drawn would work as a linear actuator, I would not recommend it. The torsional stiffness and strength of an axle are proportional to the polar moment of inertia, a section property. Most of the stiffness comes from the outside of the cross shaped axle. But in the threaded axle, you lose all the stiffness of the outer area because it is not continuous. This means you only get stiffness and strength from the small core. I think the threaded axle would bend and break very easily if subjected to much torque. Eric

Yes! Dust is the bane of my existence, especially since I am allergic to it. The only effective way I have found to remove dust without taking the sets apart is to use make-up (cosmetic) brushes. But when I do that, I sneeze for the next 3 days. The Death Star which is suspended from the ceiling with fishing line is impossible to dust. But the real Death Star would be covered with interstellar dust, so I guess it is OK! Eric

As of last year, my collection included: Every Technic set from 1977-2007 Every Model Team set Every Space set from Futuron-present including all Star Wars A few sculptures A couple of giant "Teknomecha" (4500 pieces each) In my old house, I had a 24 x 24 foot room above my wood shop just for Lego. But then I moved into town and had no more room. Now, even after adding on a 20 x 10 foot room to my house just for Lego, I only have room for about half. I sold all my Star Wars and will probably sell all my Space. Here are a couple of photos: Eric

By the way, don't forget to build the alternate model of 8862. It is a combine (farm equipment) which is just as good as 8274. I liked it so much that I bought two copies of this set so I could display both. My favorite alternate model (not counting Universal Sets) is the 8480 submarine. Maybe it is time for a white set review? *skull* White is pretty rare. For your blue set, I recommend you review 8462. There are only a couple of green sets, and 8479 is the best. And then of course, 8458 is silver!! I think we all know what the best black set is. And according to your photography, you have lots of them! But don't forget 8868. Eric

Another great review and a wonderful set of pictures. I like your nomenclature for the BJST. Acronyms always sound nicely scientific; much better than "digger". No one would know you made it up until they found out what it means. I also really like what I will call your "kinetic photos". They convey a sense of motion and show the range of the mechanism without the big file sizes of animations. How long of a shutter speed did you use? The secret to not getting too much friction in the turntable is using extra nuts and jamming them together. You don't want to actually clamp the nuts tight across the turntable. You want to jam two nuts tightly together at each end which prevents them from unwinding, but still leave a little free play (gap). This way it will hold the assembly together but not prevent it from moving. Mine moves quite easily. This same concept is used on the pen plotter or 8094. "Slewed"? I think that's a word. How about "slewn" or "slain" or "slewifacated"? I think "rotated" is best. *sweet* Eric

Excellent! We will finally see a yellow review (unless you change it to red). I'm am looking forward to seeing it since, even though I have two copies of 8862, I don't have the box.

IMHO, 8829 is much better than 8296. First, 8829 is a lot bigger. I really like the huge rear balloon tires. They both have rack and pinion steering, and they both have trailing arm rear suspension with a V-2 engine. I think the body on 8829 is a little more well done. For 8296, I think the alternate tractor model is much better. For more comparisons, see Technicopedia. Eric

A great set review, as always. Nice try making a review of a set that was not red. It almost worked! Maybe next time. *sweet* One thing I noticed is that a bunch of your pictures are missing the beam that goes over the left hand wheel as a fender. Like this picture: What kind of camera do you use? The pictures have very good depth of field, meaning that both the foreground and the background are in good focus. This is usually hard to do without a very small aperture. Yes, "reminiscing" is a word. It means to fondly remember the past. I also noticed that the engine was sticky. Set 8408 has the same problem. It took me forever to figure out what the problem was. If you take the engine out of the model, it turns nice and smooth. Then when you put it back in, it works terrible. It turns out the key is that, in the back, there is an 8 tooth spur gear and a 24 tooth crown gear used as a spur. If you look at Technica, you will see that there are two different crown gears. One of them works well mated with an 8 tooth on parallel axles, and the other one doesn't. The difference is only supposed to be longer teeth, so it really should not matter, but it does. If your set works bad, try switching the crown gear to one of the other variety. Worked for me. Eric

UPDATE All of the sets from 1989 are now added, including 8024, 8034, 8044, 8054, 8835, 8854, and the venerable 8862. Over 500 photographs were taken to cover this year, including the animations.

Philo writes about the micromotor here and took some motors apart here. It looks like you can't take them apart without destroying them. When in doubt, bang on it with a hammer! :-D Eric

Did you use Ferrari to prove your point? Any physics teacher would have to admit that a really fast car, approaching the speed of light, will always look red as it drives away due to red shift!! X-D On the other hand, 8880 looks pretty fast and it is black, although I have seen pictures of one that someone built in red. Yellow might be good too. Some cars even look fast in green. Eric

The purpose of the threaded axle is to carry tension. Regular axles are used primarily for carrying torsion (for gears), sometimes for compression (8855 landing gear, helicopter skids), and sometimes just for looks (roll cages, canopies). But used in tension, connectors will usually just pop off. With the threads and the corresponding nuts, this part can be used to squeeze parts together (like the pen in the plotter of 8094), or to hold heavy assemblies onto turntables (like 8862 and 8851). With the power crane (8854) reviewed here, that is the complete list of sets which used this part. I wrote about it here: http://www.ericalbrecht.com/technic/1984.html#Parts Eric

Wow, that first picture is great! You must have a very wide angle lens with the capability to focus very close (macro). The perspective makes the model look huge. Nice work. I think the suspension on this set is my favorite of all Technic. It has such large travel and is so.... what word should I use..... "bouncy". Hey, why do you only review sets which are red? :-D Eric

Great pictures, especially the perspective from overhead. This is one of my favorite Technic models because it packs so many features in a relatively small space. And I'm working on documenting this one in Technicopedia right now! Thanks for the photos, Eric

As you have discovered by now, they called the pneumatic dampers "hydraulics" at first. I never figured out why they did this. The pneumatic actuators at least function like hydraulics even if they use air for a fluid instead of oil (and are compressible). But the dampers have nothing in common with hydraulics whatsoever. I guess they just couldn't think of a good marketing term for them, or perhaps it was just a poor translation into English. As someone who works with aircraft hydraulics for a living, I remember being pretty excited when I first saw this in the catalogs, and then pretty disappointed when I found out what they actually meant. As if that wasn't bad enough, the first released dampers were very poor and broke after only a few cycles, but at least LEGO replaced them with an improved design for free. Real hydraulic fluid is pretty caustic and certainly messy, so I doubt LEGO will ever go that route. Eric

Update I have added the sets from 1987 and 1988 including 8832, 8852, 8853, 8855, and 8865. Enjoy. I agree. I spend more time making the computer images for my site than any other portion. In a few cases I can find an Ldraw file posted somewhere, but not usually. In the cases when I make my own, I usually don't make the entire model, but only the portions I want to show. I would love to have models of entire sets. The beauty of hosting a Ldraw file library is that they are really small files! Anyone who wants to send me Ldraw files is most welcome. I haven't created a place to host them yet, but I could add least use them to create the computer images and would be happy to provide credit. You will notice in the latest 1988 update that someone has already started doing this and it saved me at least a week of work.

There are quite a few things I would like to add someday including box photos and instructions. Instructions are available at Peeron already, but I have been trying not to link to any other sites. I host and develop all my own data. If I link to someone else and then they change their domain, URLs, or close their site, then all my links are wrong and I'd have to update them. I don't want it to get out of date like that. The other reason I haven't done that so far is that, for the moment, I don't have ANY copyright LEGO material. Every picture on the site I took myself and every word I wrote myself, so there is no possibility of violating the "fair play" policy. Once I start posting things like instructions I will have to start adding unpleasant legal disclaimers everywhere. An alternative to adding instructions would be adding Ldraw files instead. You could still see how to build the set but without any copyrighted info. This would be quite useful since I haven't found any repository of Technic Ldraw files. Update I have added the sets from 1987 and 1988 including 8832, 8852, 8853, 8855, and 8865. Enjoy.

These are some very nice pictures and a very thorough pictorial review. Thanks for the effort! And thanks for the reference to my web site as well. 8848 is one of my favorite sets because of its unique functions, especially the lift for the front bucket. Eric