Blakbird

Only when the body is removed! The body stiffens the chassis so there will be more flex in the gearbox when the body is removed, but it still works. Ideally there would be a structural member spanning the flex point in the chassis to the body stiffness was not needed.

I replaced the red connector behind the steering wheel. This change was just made for color. Because the black one is shorter, I needed a longer axle to support the steering wheel. I did want to mention that I love your removable body mod, but I do have one difference of opinion. You mention in the video that you can just omit the connectors behind the seats because they are not very important. I found that these two connectors are the only thing preventing the gearbox flex issue that I described in my previous post, so I would not recommend taking them out. They solidify the gearbox which is a good thing.

Yes. I actually think it works even better with the body on. I had to use a longer axle: 4L instead of 3L.

Here are my part substitutions. 88ea blue 3L axles replaced with black 40ea blue axle pins replaced with black 10ea red pins 3L with bush replaced with black 8ea blue 1/2 pins replaced with LBG 4ea yellow 1/2 bush replaced with LBG 3ea LBG axle replaced with black axle pin 3L 2ea red axle replaced with black 2ea red 4L thin liftarm replaced with black 1ea BLG pin joiner replaced with 2 bushes 1ea red driving ring axle joiner replaced with standard black axle joiner Standard.

The "rubber" rubber bands (the black ones) wear out over time, but I have never had that problem with the silicone versions (white, blue, red). They should last effectively forever.

Finished the model a couple of hours ago and thought I would share a few more photos. I incorporated Jetro's changes to allow easy removal of the body, and I'm glad I did. Now the functions are easily visible. I also replaced 100+ pins and connectors with better colors to improve the appearance of the car. I think it looks really good. For those of you wondering how big it is next to a "standard" supercar, here is a picture next to Crowkillers' Porsche.

I can't find any difference in the number of gears in use whether the model is built per instructions or with the mod. It is pretty easy to diagram the gearbox and find out. I can't say for certain because there are several such places and most are hidden now. Perhaps it would work in some places but not others. The original parts works fine as long as you are very careful with orientation.

Well, I'm not done building yet, but I can let you know some time tomorrow. If the body attachment points are all along the bottom, then it won't help. There needs to be some support further up to give some bending stiffness.

Everything goes through those bevel gears. It is the connection from the wheels to the transmission. I didn't find that it made any relevant difference which way I placed the bushings, but you should use whatever works. Bevel gears are often trouble and really shouldn't be used to take a lot of torque. This isn't the only set. There is a set of 20 tooth bevels in the transmission as well. In 1st gear, I counted 37 gears actively rotating. The output of the cube is locked at 90 degrees while the paddle is depressed, but as soon as you let go you lose the lock so you just hope everything stays in place. That's why the friction pin is there. Right! It is the magic transmission powder that makes it work!

i will have to circle back to that question. Yes, I can explain how it works but it is going to require a bunch of pictures which I'll have to make it LDraw because you can't see the innards in photos. Yes, it outputs exactly 90 degree increments and stays at these increments inside the mechanism. However, the shift gates themselves are downstream of here. There is a gear mounted on an axle pin with friction as shown below which is there to prevent the gates from moving backward when the rubber bands return the ratchet. It mostly works, but the force required to return the ratchet is a little too high and this can sometimes pull the orange cranks backward a bit after shifting. In my case though, it has not caused my any troubles. I have had zero lockups.

I have completed my build of the chassis and thought I would share my thoughts so far in a mini review. Firstly, the box is pretty cool. Not that I care about the box, but I do care about the box even though I don't care about the box. By that I mean that the box is pretty cool. I'll expound. Generally when I open a new Technic set I just tear into it. I toss the box aside (usually after ripping off an end to get it open) then dump out all the parts and commence building. My building speed is very high. However, in this case it was quite different. I actually looked at the box. I even studied it. I also found that I took each step really slowly like I was savoring it. Perhaps the box does have a subconscious effect on the perception of the set which then influences the building experience. At least for me, this appears so. The instructions are pretty cool too, and I did take the time to read all the introductory material before beginning. It doesn't tell you a whole lot about the real car, but it does explain the design process of the LEGO model. They spent 3 years on this thing. Several pages into the build instructions I found an odd moist gray powder between two pages as seen below. This powder soaked into the pages and through about 20 pages staining them. I wonder what it is? The instructions are the best I've seen for color separation. I had no trouble distinguishing DBG from black which is a first. Part of this is the print quality, and part of it is that they finally took my advice and outlined black with white. This makes it really clear. So I got to Step 5 and found a problem. When there are 800+ steps, this is not a great place to find a problem, but there is a silver lining. The below image shows how the instructions show to build a little bevel gearbox assembly. This is part of the fwd/rev shifter. The pin joiner is just there as a spacer and to prevent the axles from pushing in too far, but the diameter is too big. The tan bevel gears rub on it causing a bunch of friction. This is the very first gear assembly and it has lots of friction. I swapped out the pin joiner for two bushings and it now moves very smoothly. It is also supported by a red 2L axle that needs to be positioned just right to avoid even more friction by pulling the gearbox off center. So how big a difference does it make? I never built it the other way, but I can say that having now completed the chassis the gearbox works perfectly. There is no chatter, no skipping, no stalling. Every gear works smoothly with no problem. The good news is that this seems to fix the gearbox! The bad news is that this is Step 5 and is totally inaccessible later, so changing it could be a lot of work. This area is used in ANY gear, so it really needs to be smooth. If this is all it took to solve the gearbox issues, that was pretty easy. By the way, I also made the change to fix the gear sequence by swapping the gears in the back. That also works great. The press release from TLG saying that they intentionally made the gears shift out of order to limit the number of gears used at once makes no sense. Having now looked at the design, the number of gears in use is exactly the same if you make the change as if you don't. To me the moral of the story is that TLG should do some fan testing. They play test every set with kids, right? Well for a set aimed more at adults, why not test it on some adults? I'm one (some say). Here is that central shifter with my change and also using black 3L pins where they will be visible. Here's another spot that can get you into trouble with friction, and there are several of these. The red 2L axle is supported by a pin with pin hole. The trouble is that this part rests on only a single pin and can therefore rotate. If it is not perfectly aligned with the axle, it can cause a lot of friction. Be careful here. Here'e the paddle shifter assembly. Say what you will about the design of the gearbox, but nobody has mentioned that this little cube is genius. I love the way the ratcheting mechanism works. I couldn't take the color vomit so I changed out a few of the parts that will be visible. Below shows before and after. I changed the paddles, the red linkages (4L liftarms) and the blue pins. It is possible to use light gray changeover catches, but I don't have any at the moment. And here is the completed chassis! Like I said, it works perfectly. It is also wonderfully stiff, for the most part. The front and rear assemblies are very rigid, but there is a weak spot in the middle. Right in front of the forward most gears in the transmission is a 5x11 liftarm frame which is not attached to anything behind it. When you compress the suspension, you can see a gap form here which is not a good spot because it can jam up the gearing. Perhaps the body will stiffen it later.

Yes of course. I had forgotten that you had posted it. I guess I was behind, or maybe I had Porsche fever. Did he ever present it officially in a video? I know it shows up in some of his layouts but not in a standalone video. If you can reproduce it from the available data I can certainly make instructions.

If the gear shifting sequence is as intended, then why did S&H delay shipment for a month?

Instructions for Akiyuki's Elevator Module are now tested and complete and are available here along with a Brickstore parts list. 110 pages 1621 parts Most of the credit for reverse engineering this module goes to Courbet who did the work making an LDraw file with instruction steps. I had the easy job of formatting the instructions. I had a lot of trouble with this module. The trouble did not come from the instructions, but from the switching mechanism. When the elevator reaches the top of the tower, it triggers a switch which is supposed to reverse the mechanism. However, the switch took to long to operate and in the interim the gears would grind a skip like crazy. It was horrible. I stayed up all night changing things. I tried different length strings, different shock absorbers, different timing, adding extensions to the trigger; none of it worked. I finally tracked the source of the problem to the transmission driving ring. If you just manually switch the trigger back and forth it works fine, but once the cable and motor are under load it does not. The issue is friction between the dogs (tabs) on the driving ring and the clutch gear. If there is significant torque in the joint then the tabs do not want to slide and the driving ring sticks. I tried adding some silicone spray to the driving ring and it completely solved the problem. There is a bit of timing to set here. Everything at the bottom end is self adjusting including the ball gates and the ramp direction. The gate in the elevator hopper is also self adjusting. The small linear actuator at the top can be used to adjust the trigger. Making it longer biases the trigger towards the white hopper while making it shorter biases it toward the yellow hopper. You need just the right balance. The length of the cable is also important. The 1 meter cable is just right and can be finely adjusted by pulling out the 1/2 pins on the bottom of the hoppers which hold the cable in place. You want just enough length that one hopper reaches the top while the other is at the bottom. Once complete, the module is very tall and impressive. The tower can be easily separated from the input hopper for transport or storage. The tower uses 4 uniform modules in the middle, so nothing is preventing adding more to make it even taller. You would just need a longer string. Although the module is now finally reliable, it has some problems if you want to use it in a GBC circuit. Most obviously, it has no output ramp so the balls just drop from a tremendous height. The input ramp is also MUCH higher than the standard calls for which means you can't just put any other module upstream of it. There is not really any way to make the input lower without a complete redesign of the bottom end.

Make sure you take a video of the ensuing fire and pile of melted plastic.

It is amazing how inaccurate the availability announcements were. We were told the set would not be available in brand retail stores except in Germany and Austria, yet I just picked up one up at my local store in the USA this morning. We were told it would be available at S&H June 1, and yet no one has been able to order one. Listing it as "Out of Stock" seems a bit disingenuous since they have piles of them sitting around waiting for whatever instruction errata update they intend to make. I did get a chance to talk to a few other fans waiting in line for the store to open, and the knowledge of the problems with the set seems widespread. Everyone already knew about it. Of course, this is not exactly a random sampling of the public, this is a line of people waiting to buy the set on opening day.

Wow, that review kicked megablocks. Not only were the writing and pictures awesome, but don't think I didn't notice the custom banner graphics for each section and even the Porsche emblems for the rating at the end. You really pulled out all the stops. Ultimate indeed.

When I first started the thread, I did not imagine we would make it this far. I omitted the Mindstorms modules partially to keep the scope of the project reasonable, but also because I don't own any Mindstorms! Of course now that we are nearly complete with the standard modules, it would be possible to add the Mindstorms to the list, or we could start a different list with just those modules. If we are going to do those models, we are going to have to include the program to run each as well. I admit I love the ball cleaner with a hot and burning love. It would be really cool to have that one. Requires an external compressor though.

That was the scope of the project from the very first post.

A six axis robotic arm is among the most complex things you can build with Mindstorms, so it is not the place to start if you are a beginner. The Mindstorms modules are not part of this topic, and that arm is not even a GBC anyway. I highly suggest you start with a much simpler arm and go from there.

Squarish. A Technic beam is closer to square than a Technic brick, but it is still not square. The difference in dimensions can be important in some models.

It's a fine question but we are not going to get a satisfactory answer. I once asked a LEGO employee this very question at a convention and the answer was something like "because studless parts are more compatible with the rest of the system". This answer makes no sense because obviously the studded parts are more compatible. He also said there was no chance of even going back. One unintended side effect of the change is in public perception. If you take the 851 tractor and show it to pretty much anyone on Earth, they will recognize it as a LEGO tractor. But with modern Technic, there are lots of kids and even adults and conventions who see a Technic display and think it is not LEGO because it does not contain the types of parts they recognize. This seems like a problem from a branding perspective.

Instructions for Akiyuki's Planet Module are now tested and complete and are available here along with a Brickstore parts list. 68 pages 1558 parts Most of the credit for reverse engineering this module goes to Courbet who did the work making an LDraw file with instruction steps. I had the easy job of formatting the instructions. This was the most trouble free instruction and build process I have ever had. I was able to keep the first draft of the instructions because there were no errors. This module is really reliable and really fun to watch, however it requires some very precise timing. The relative positions of the planets have to be set down to single tooth accuracy. Luckily, Akiyuki has designed in a very simple way to make adjustments using a unique coupler made from 3L axles with stop and a 12 tooth double bevel gear. The gear can be slid back to disengage, rotate one tooth, and re-engage. It only takes a couple of minutes to get everything set. The module is also very long! It is by far the longest of the modules and takes up most of my table. The planets I used in the instructions are not the same 3 that Akiyuki chose for his video, but any of the variations can be used with no change in function. Each builder should select to their own taste.

Both colors came in that set, depending on which year you bought it. Mine is DBG.

Each page is a text file and a bunch of 400 pixel wide images, so the load of those should be almost instantaneous. The revolving animation averages about 700Kb so it is certainly bigger than the rest of the page, but still not particularly large. Of course, if someone looks through 200 models worth of pages, then it adds up fast. I don't want to put them behind a link though because I actually consider them very important. Since most readers will not own the set they are reading about, being able to see it from all angles is a big benefit. Those who are savvy enough to have the LDraw tools and download the file can of course see it even better.