CP5670

BUMP I noticed today that the micromotor in my 8480 has also died. It was working fine the last time I tried it, although that was several months ago. I don't know if it's even worth replacing these given the rate they die at. The cheapest used ones are $15-$20 each on Bricklink. I wasn't able to figure out a way to open and fix them when I made this thread, but I might look into it again now. I checked the part numbers on all my micromotors to see if there was a specific bad batch, but oddly, all 8 of mine have different markings on them.

Dennis Bosman has built some great cement trucks in the past. They're on his website.

The Stack-on containers discussed in the parts storage thread are a bit expensive but are very space efficient. You can line up a bunch of them along the wall on the edge of your table. I think that would be a lot better than using shoeboxes or anything else that spreads out horizontally. How much floor space do you have? I use several of these packs for displaying built models. Even one of them can hold a lot of stuff. This might be too big for what you want, but there are many other shelf products like this in various sizes. Same here. I never stayed in a dorm, despite everyone I talked to advising me to. I commuted from my parents' home as an undergrad and got an apartment for grad school, which has been an extremely good decision in hindsight. Although I had all my Lego crammed into my bedroom at one point, and learned how to pack things in back then.

I guess we were right about the LAs. It did seem to me that they struggle in 8265 too, especially compared to the similar but worm gear based mechanisms in the old 8862. Although it's strange that nobody in the community has really commented on this earlier. The LAs have been out for over two years now. The new LAs will probably have a different part number, but I don't think they will make any obvious external changes. TLG has revised parts like this before and the revisions have looked nearly identical. (the 9V gear motor and damped shock absorbers come to mind) I wonder if the LAs are the only problem they are going to fix. The slewing function also needs more gear reduction from what I've seen in the videos. Someone also said that the function switcher does not always lock all three transmission rings into place. I'm actually a bit surprised that they used the standard transmission setup there. Before the set was released, I was hoping they would introduce a new axle joiner piece without ribs, allowing the rings to slide over them smoothly.

There are tons of examples of the half-width case. It was basically used wherever the 3/4 pin would be used today. This and this are some places that come to mind. It was used for a full-width hole here. This was less common but was still done in some Universal-type sets, where there were a lot of alternate models and they didn't use exactly the ideal parts for each one.

That gearing setup has probably passed the limits of what is practical and useful with Lego, but it's still a very cool proof of concept. I like to build things like this too, not really as part of an actual model but just to see what is possible with Technic. This is easy enough to try. Load the file in SR3D Builder (it supports ldraw files natively), select any gear in the drivetrain in the "brick selection" mode, switch to the "animation mode" and drag the gear. The animation system usually works very nicely, although I think it considers differentials to be on a separate geartrain from the bevel gears inside and might not work on an adder/subtracter mechanism.

As others have said, there is not much reason to do this when you have a full-width brick or beam, but it was done all the time with half-width liftarms in the 90s. It became less common after the dark gray 3/4 pin came out in 1996.

It's interesting that they identify long geartrains as a problem. The gearing in this set doesn't actually look that bad compared to other complex sets released in the past, as far as I can tell from the pictures people have posted. I think the problem here is the internal friction LAs seem to have (discussed in the other 8043 thread). They are harder to move than you would expect given the amount of load on them. This is fairly common on motorized geartrains in general, especially those running at a high speed, and doesn't necessarily indicate a problem. Actually, you will often find that the parts have no visible damage, despite the powder.

Interesting development. I guess it's a good thing I held off buying this set. For what it's worth, I have had one M motor essentially die out after some very light use. It barely turns at all and there seems to be something blocking it inside. It's not from this set though (I got in 2008) and TLG sent me a replacement some time ago. My other M motors have had no problems. The model does seem to lack enough gear reduction though from what I've seen in the videos, at least on some of the motors. I think that would certainly improve it. The M motors should be good enough as long as they are sufficiently geared down (and don't have additional problems of their own). At one time, the best motors we had were the 9V geared and ungeared motors, and people were building similar kinds on functions on MOCs back then. The M motors are much more powerful than those older motors.

Cool video. As you pointed out, the modern off-road wheels like 94.8x44 aren't very good with traction. They're made of a thinner material than older balloon tires and seem to slip more easily. Out of the tires in my collection, the big racing slicks like the 8458 tires have especially good traction. Actually, I think the 81.6x38 wheels are made of the same, thinner material as 94.8x44. It's not the thicker rubber used on the 56x30 or 68.8x40 tires.

These look cool but they're too big to be practical for sorting pieces, and if TLG is selling them directly then they will probably be overpriced like most of the other Lego accessories.

I got a 5984 and 5985 a few days ago. The set designs are excellent but the whites are all over the place, even among pieces of the same type. The white 1x2 plates in 5984 came in about 4 different varieties, ranging from the deep, rich white of the 1990s to the translucent, Megablok-style white of 2007. All of them had the semicircular markings on the bottom, indicating that they had all been produced after 2007 and were not just leftovers from earlier production batches. Although most bricks have a weak grip these days, there are definitely some exceptions like this piece. I think the older transparent cheese slopes have a much more firm grip than current ones.

Philo tested all the motors on his motor page at 12V and they apparently worked fine, although he has a warning about it at the bottom. I tried out a few of fine at 12V just to see if they work, but haven't used them in actual models. 9.6V should be fine for motors. My guess is that the actual motor cores TLG uses are designed for 12V operation anyway. You probably need to be more careful with the IR receivers or lights though.

I would get them all again if possible. I have always restricted my focus to relatively few themes and only buy sets I really want or if I find especially good deals on them. However, most of my collection consists of sets from the late 80s and 90s, which would be quite a bit more expensive to buy today than when I got them (mostly off ebay 7 or 8 years ago). And of course, MOCs would be almost impossible to rebuild exactly as they were. On the other hand, there are practically no earthquakes around here either.

This thing is quite fast. I also like how the suspension is designed.

This model does have a few flaws, but it's still my favorite Technic set of the last few years. It's quite large and mechanically complex, and is an exceptional value at $80. In this case, I think the LAs work better than pneumatics would have and make the model more interesting. The LA functions work pretty well for me. They do have some friction when moving both with or against gravity, but I think that is an issue with the LAs themselves, as discussed in the excavator thread. The steering setup is imprecise and has too much friction in it though. I replaced the friction pin and red bush pin on the pivot point with gray and tan connector pins. There is more room for improvement with it. Adding a second, symmetric beam on the other side (so that the gear is connected to the pivot point in two ways) might allow it to hold its position better. Yes, changing the rear knob gear is a must unless you're motorizing it. This is what I did: I also added some more gear reduction here, using the extra 12t and 20t gears that come with the set. These changes makes the model far more enjoyable to play with.

8275 is a close comparison with the PF elements and tracks, and it was $150. 8043 has four LAs as well, but $50 more for that with a tradeoff of 260 fewer pieces is not what I call a good value. As for the black pins, even if you don't count those the other sets are still better values. In the case of 8258, it had so many pins since the model itself is much larger. 8043 is a relatively small model compared to the last few flagships. On the other hand, the 8043 pricing seems to be better in Europe, especially relative to the prices of other Lego sets there. I think someone here had posted a link to a Dutch site selling it for 130 euros.

I'm not sure about the price of the LAs. That is the price Lego Education charges, but some people have reported that you can call Lego customer service and order them for $6 each from there. As for the set's value, I think it's quite the contrary. This excavator is arguably the worst value we have had in years in terms of the parts-to-price ratio, at $0.178/piece. For comparison, 8258 is $0.08/piece, 8265 is $0.075/piece and 8275 is $0.108/piece, Of course, you can't go by the piece count only, but these other sets also include LAs, PF elements, etc. and do give some idea of how much those special parts should be worth. As I said earlier, I can't remember such a bad value among any flagship Technic set since 8485, way back in 1995. Granted, the design of the actual model is top notch, but it needs to be to justify such a high price. The price also makes any flaws in the design harder to excuse.

Yes, I meant that for sets in general. I have not encountered any such fake parts in my own purchases, even after buying a couple hundred vintage sets on ebay and Bricklink over time. (although I first got the bad quality, genuine Lego pieces from a Bricklink seller, and thought they were certain to be fakes ) The only place I can think of where counterfeiting would even be practical is with rare parts that are sold individually, such as rare licensed or custom minifigs. However, I have not heard of any actual cases of that either.

That sounds about right. Curved slopes also became more common around that period, and tiles increasingly started to be used as purely decorative elements like davee123 said. In fact, I think this was around the time when the AFOL community picked up all these techniques too. You occasionally saw SNOT back then but it wasn't nearly as widespread as it is today. I remember around 2000, the vast majority of things that showed up on Brickshelf and Lugnet used mostly traditional construction, including what were considered to be the best MOCs at the time. Today, it's the other way around.

SP3 has certainly come to an end. At two years, it already lasted longer and had more sets than most Space lines of the past. It had a good run. It would suck if we get no Space at all next year though. I love realistic space themes like Launch Command and Space Port, but they are really subthemes of City and are no replacement for the sci-fi Space themes. However, I'm not sure if TLG even considers Space to be a separate, "evergreen" theme of its own. It may be that TLG thinks of SP3 as an action line, like Atlantis and Power Miners.

Didn't you have another thread on this a while ago? As I said back then, you can't ever be entirely sure of something like this, but I think it's unlikely in the extreme with a set like 10179. It would take a lot of effort even to collect all the standard parts for it, and custom molding all the special parts on top of that (the molds often cost several thousand dollars) would only be profitable if they were able to sell the sets in very large quantities, which is hard to do on ebay. That being said, there are actually some bootleg clone companies that copy Lego set designs of the past. However, they usually have different box art and are easy to recognize.

If you forget about something when doing a search (for example, a phrase without quotes) and the results come up bogus, you usually know it right away. Although 10 seconds is fine if you have changed it to that. It used to be 30 seconds the last time I tried it, which was excessive.

Some great observations here. It does seem that the LAs have a lot of additional friction when they move under load, even if the load is fairly moderate. I've noticed the same thing on the 8265 Front Loader. As for the LAs wearing out with use, they have been around for a while now, so I would think someone would have noticed it earlier if it was a big problem. If the issue is simply that the motors are not powerful enough, they just need more gear reduction, although it may be difficult to find a place to fit that into the model. I end up doing this with most of my models. The wire is a bit inconvenient but it's better than dealing with the inconsistent voltage outputs you tend to get with batteries.

The 9641 set has been around for a few years now, but it's very expensive for what you get. You can buy some of the pneumatic parts individually on the Lego Education site, and of course the Forest Tractor is still around. Those are probably the best sources of pneumatics at the moment. The Swiffer products work nicely for removing dust off bricks. They don't clean the dust inside hollow studs (which needs washing), but that dust is less noticeable anyway. If you build in non-Technic themes too, you find various ways to deal with the dust. The hardest things to clean are not actually studs, but the greebled details commonly seen in Space and City models. I still haven't found any good solution for those.