CP5670

The boom extension works fine for me. It sounds like something is not built quite right, or it's possible that you have a clutch gear that slips too easily. You could try replacing the clutch on top (easily accessible) with a standard gear and see if that improves anything, although I didn't need to do this. I think I see what you're saying here. The model is designed so that the line gets unrolled at the same time as the boom extends, but it doesn't happen at the same rate. If you want to extend the boom all the way, you will need to lower the hook a lot first, or it will eventually rise up to the end of the boom and get stuck.

I'm not into Halo at all, but those vehicles look quite nice. I especially like the EMP truck. As for quality, I do see considerable variations in those purple bricks, but it's not any worse than what we get with Lego these days.

The yellow I was seeing in 2007 and 2008 sets was particularly bad and looked just like the Megablok yellow. I think it has improved a bit since then, but not by enough. Their employees have given isolated responses to some of the issues in the past, but there has been no official acknowledgment by the company. There were various comments made by the TLG quality engineer two years ago (which have turned out to be partly wrong), and unnamed sources have said some things about the Chinese manufacturing of the sets with nonstandard numbers. I think TLG's quality team knows about all of the problems, but they are making no serious effort to fix them and are just hoping that consumers will not notice. I was actually planning to ask Copmike to send a link to this page of the thread to TLG. We have suddenly gotten several pictures of the color issues, which tend to be tricky to capture in photos. I don't think anything will come of it, but it's worth a try.

Nice mods, especially the dual differentials. I was also wondering if that M motor is powerful enough to move the whole thing.

I have a standard Spyrius android with a visor added on. If you don't have one of these, I will probably come to this event anyway, so I can just bring one with me.

I think a 5870 is a better option, even though the 4890s will be faster in most benchmarks you see. I generally suggest avoiding SLI or CF except on top end cards. A single GPU is more robust in my experience and offers more consistent performance across a variety of games. I went into more detail on this here (down the page) a while ago.

If you play games, then the video card. That card is the weak point of the system compared to everything else. ATI currently has the best cards at most price points (the 4890, 5850 and 5870 would all be worthwhile upgrades), although Nvidia is expected to bring out some competition in a few months.

I've heard people say this about the 9V train motors before. Although it's true that any motor will eventually fail in theory, are the 9V train motors especially prone to it in some way? With the exception of the red micromotors (which apparently had some design or manufacturing flaw), I haven't actually seen any other type of Lego motor die over time. I have some ungeared 9V Technic motors that are close to 20 years old and have seen moderate use but work fine.

I'll stick to themes that I am interested in here, or this list would become way too large. 8448 comes to mind. This set is quite popular and is in high demand these days, but to me it was always a disappointment as the successor to 8880. The appearance is beautiful, but the functionality is a step backwards in many ways. The modular buildings (CC, GG, etc.), even though I like the City theme otherwise. I went into more detail on this here. I will probably get some bricks hurled my way for this, but 497. I mean, it's nice (especially for its time), but it's basically just a larger version of 487 with mostly the same features, and the shape is a little odd, with the wingtips looking like they are missing something. I think the later 6980 was a better model overall.

The manual control is not really the problem. It's the type of control knob that TLG uses. For 8265, this is what I did instead:

The limit seems to be on "adults." 18 seems to be a loose number corresponding to adults in the first post, but Siegfried said later on that it could potentially be lower than that. That depends on whether the existing limit (even if you interpret it to be 18) is actually deterring anyone from joining. I don't think the answer to that is so clear either way. It should be kept in mind that the stupid kids on internet forums are also the people most likely to ignore any rules. As for those of you talking of adult-themed MOCs as a reason for the 18+ limit, I can tell that you have never frequented a large forum outside the Lego community. As I said earlier, the discussion here is very tame in that respect compared to most other major forums out there, such as some PC gaming ones I frequent.

Finally, it's about time BL addressed that issue. Although the search results will still remain messed up until all the European sellers get on board with it.

I think this point is actually the main source of the confusion. I interpret these concepts a little differently, especially in the context of the other things you say. The official rule refers to being "offended" by "adult content," for example. This is not only unlikely to deter kids from joining, but also gives the wrong impression of what the rationale for the rule is, and indeed, the nature of the discussions on EB (which are actually very mild and friendly compared to many other forums I've seen with no age limits). What adds to the confusion is that the examples you gave in the first post of unacceptable behavior, such as stating one's age, are not what most people would consider to be immature or stupid conduct. After reading your later posts, I see that what you are really trying to accomplish with these examples is to deter stupid lurkers from joining, but perhaps it would be better to simply call for a high standard of posting in the first place. It would make your intentions more clear and allow the enforcement of the rule to be more consistent than it currently is. The official statement of the rule can be still kept short, and maybe you can just include links to a few examples of good posts as well as immature posts from banned members, with the posters' names removed if needed. I was referring to your original statement that a poster saying that they are under 18 would result in a warning or ban because they "lied" about being an adult when they joined. On the other hand, you later said that what you mean by "adult" is someone who exhibits intelligent behavior, and an "adult" could be younger than 18. So the poster did not necessarily lie about anything, and if they were banned it probably wasn't directly because of such a post. As I said earlier, I think this inconsistency is a result of the rule itself and how it is worded. Of course, these are all just my thoughts on this issue, not a demand to change anything.

Thanks for the pictures, ILikePi and Seventh Son. It's always good to have hard evidence of these problems. In both cases the problem also concerns the exact same type of piece (1x2 tiles and Technic triangles), further highlighting the inconsistency. That second picture looks especially bad. That third triangle looks worse than Megabloks and is something I would expect to see from the Chinese bootleg brands. I had actually never seen the problem with dark gray until now, but in that picture it looks worse than anything I've encountered with yellow or white.

I will say that as a PhD student, I use all three of those words interchangeably in casual discussion, and all the other students I know do the same. I think the problem here is that the rule as it is officially stated is not clearly reflecting what you actually want to accomplish on the site, and even your first post in this thread is not entirely in line with your subsequent posts. I know from experience that any sort of inconsistency in the rules does unfortunately encourage people to bend them, which is why I expressed the opinion I did earlier. It looks to me that what you ultimately want is sensible and mature behavior, so it may be better to emphasize that point directly and explicitly instead of focusing on the term "adult" (which is ambiguous and confuses the issue) or the particular age of 18 (which as you say is only a rough guideline).

It's worth noting that EB is a lot more lenient on this issue than many other forums I've seen. Signature images aren't allowed at all on two other forums I go to, and for good reason in my opinion. On a Lego forum like this it makes more sense to allow them, as it's nice to see the various MOCs that people have built, although at the same time they shouldn't be making the posts significantly larger in terms of vertical space.

I like both sets and MOCs. My focus has been more towards MOCs in recent years, but building official models and modifying them in various ways while keeping true to the "style" of the original is something I like doing as well. However, I'm kind of falling into the same category as David Thomsen these days. My time for Lego is increasingly limited and MOCs take far more time to build than sets, especially for a slow builder like me. This is particularly true of Technic MOCs, and I have a couple of those in progress that have been unfinished for a few years now. Set building and modding is much less time intensive and is still something I find fun.

I agree with this, especially since the quality is obviously there with these parts. I am always open to using non-Lego parts in MOC if they do something that cannot be done with Lego. On the other hand, I don't really see the point of these aluminum beams, and can't think of many situations where the same thing couldn't be accomplished with standard Lego parts. They aren't necessarily needed even for Sariel's model, as people have built much larger models than that with standard Lego parts (Alvin Brant's cranes, for example). The beams are quite expensive and it wouldn't be practical to use a large quantity of them in a model. There is also a possible issue with their long-term effect on the Technic friction pins. I think the TechnicBricks article on them said that the holes are slightly smaller to get a more firm connection with the pins. The aluminum gears and axles brought up on TechnicBricks look more useful and I would be more interested in those.

We have been getting poor quality bricks out of Denmark long before TLG started doing anything in China. The sets with nonstandard numbers like magnets, board games, etc. are only a small part of the problem. This is the biggest problem with the bad parts, and has been an issue ever since the modern wave of quality flaws started at the end of 2006. I avoid buying parts on BL that have had quality issues (which excludes parts in several basic colors these days) unless it seems likely that the seller is only carrying parts from several years ago.

I was actually thinking of this while writing that post, but I wasn't sure what else to call it and thought that "battery substance" would just be confusing. The best thing would have been to have both. These bricks could have had onboard batteries to allow them to operate by themselves, but also included 9V or PF connectors that would let them be powered and controlled externally, bypassing the batteries and onboard switch.

I have noticed the same thing with this piece. I got it off Bricklink as a curiosity and didn't intend to do much with it, but it would be nice to have a way to replace the battery. I never liked these standalone light and sound pieces TLG has produced in recent years. They don't interface with any other Lego electric components at all, which goes against the whole modular philosophy of Lego. If they had included 9V or PF connectors on these bricks and allowed you to power them externally, they would be far more useful. Yes, these button batteries don't typically leak in my experience, although they do lose their charge over time even if unused. I got an unopened 5206 speed computer last month and the battery in that was DOA, although it was easily replaced. On the other hand, normal alkaline batteries do often leak if left in battery boxes for long periods. This type of acid doesn't seem to damage Lego bricks though. I had a case a few years ago where two C batteries in a (version 1) control center were leaking and the acid fell on another model I had on the shelf below it. The acid must have been there for a week or two before I noticed it, but there was no sign of damage to the bricks it touched. Some of the control center's battery contacts got corroded, but it works fine. I don't use batteries in that control center at all these days, and have rigged up a 9V transformer to the battery contacts instead.

On this point, something to keep in mind is that TLG has become a much larger company over the years, and profit margins that they considered good 10 or 20 years ago might not be acceptable today. Even if an addon car set turns in a profit, the profit margin may not be up to some minimum level they want for any new product they release. Still, I would certainly like to see separate cars for any future trains TLG releases. I like trains but am not exactly a big train collector, and if TLG releases a train set that doesn't contain enough cars, I would be much more inclined to not buy the set at all rather than buy extra copies just for the cars. I think many "occasional" train buyers like me would make the same choice. I didn't get the Emerald Night set, although that was just because I'm not really into steam trains.

I have these two from 1981, which I got on ebay 6 or 7 years ago. This was indeed done in a few sets over the years, but I don't see it in that picture. Unless you mean the minifig who looks like he's about to do it.

I picked up the two new SP3 sets a few days ago. The white in 5981 was still inconsistent, and it's hard to tell if they have actually done anything about that color. At this point, my feeling is that some of TLG's factories are producing good white while others are putting out the milky, translucent white. There were also two distinct shades of reddish brown in 5982, but it was obvious that they had been produced in different years. The smooth slopes were all the lighter shade and the textured slopes were all darker. I think that was what he meant. I don't have that set myself, but I have seen this same kind of scratch on many other types of slopes. It does seem to be a molding mark of some sort. The picture is too blurry to make out the difference easily, but as discussed earlier there have been slight differences in printed parts for a long time, and minifig heads are no exception. In fact, I noticed that the first picture in this thread contains an example with the M:Tron guys.

Nice pictures. You should include an Ice Planet guy in there as well.