CP5670

The books I read these days are all mathematical monographs. I haven't read any fiction books in several years, although I liked Asimov's work (especially the Foundation series) and the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Great model. The design reminds me of the 8082 forklift. I always like MOCs that pack a lot of functionality into a small space, and I like how the bucket has two degrees of freedom.

This poll is a little confusing. There have been at least four distinct types of road plates over the years, gray/gray pavement/road, green/gray, green/dark gray and dark gray/dark gray. I like the look of the current dark gray plates the best, but I use the first two types in my city layout because many sets included various special baseplates in those colors, which have no counterparts in the newer style. Some examples are the plates in 6391, 6395 and 6571.

As some people have said, the Swiffer products are excellent for this and require no disassembly or washing of the model, although they won't remove sticky stuff like dirt. I settled on those after trying many other things over the years. Compressed air products like Dust-off also work, but you will run through them very quickly if you have a reasonably large collection.

Good review. I guess this basically confirms what we thought about it earlier. Those half-finished functions are quite lame and were obviously taken straight from 8284, and at $100 it really is a ripoff compared to the excellent 8265 for $80. The only thing I like about it is the printed 1x2 tiles. I think what you said in the other thread makes sense, that this set was only made to fill in the TRU exclusive requirement and TLG didn't want to spend any effort on it.

That does sound attractive. I want to buy around $350 worth of sets anyway, which would easily make it worthwhile, although I'm looking for some specific sets so it really depends on what they will have available. I'm guessing it is hard to predict which sets will have beat up boxes. If anyone is interested in meeting up at some point, PM me if you want to exchange phone numbers. I will probably be there at 10 tomorrow, although it will take me a little while to set up my stuff. I may come for a hour this evening just to do the setup, although I'm still undecided on that.

This set has been around for a while, but it was always rather expensive for what you got. I think the new service packs of individual parts are much more affordable and very good for MOCers.

That year actually had a lot of great sets (8455, 4403, 4404, Discovery/NASA space sets, most of WC police), although there was plenty of bad stuff as well.

I got the new Lego Education catalog today and the various pneumatic service packs have been introduced again, now in the trans-light blue color. The best part is that airtanks are also available for the very good price (compared to what they used to be) of $15 for two. I think we may just see pneumatics return to Technic sets in the next year or two. There is also an LA service pack now, but they are quite expensive at $15 for one. It might make more sense to just get an 8265 instead, which includes 3 of them. I still see 9V polarity switches in the catalog, even though I called them about that several months ago and was told those were discontinued and OOS.

Technic techniques ( ) are somewhat specialized because they involve mechanisms. Although it doesn't hurt to just create a thread if you have something new in mind.

There is actually a relatively easy way to remove these. You can put a half-width liftarm on it and then stick an antenna through the middle. It will come out when you pull the liftarm. The real problem with them is the damage they cause to other pieces.

Which was exactly my point.

I think TLG would in principle agree to reproduce the 9V tracks, but they would only sell them in mass quantities that would be unrealistic for any individual buyers. This is how the exclusive sets designed for various companies (like the Vestas turbine) work. The company places an order for, say, $2 million worth of the sets before TLG starts production.

These things work very well for removing dust off Lego models and require no disassembly or washing of the model, although they won't remove sticky stuff like dirt. I settled on these after trying many other things over the years.

Thanks for clearing that up. The main issue for me is getting back, as I'm staying in Rockville (in the opposite direction) and I would prefer not to return that late for various reasons. It would have been better if it was earlier in the day, although the traffic should be reasonable at that time. I'll think about it.

This was one of the sets I had as a kid. I always liked that motorcycle with the 3s on it. 6394. The yellow torso is much more rare than the white one.

Maybe it's dependent on the location? The sets I bought during the last year had a different type of wheel that has no problems, but I've only gotten two or three sets with those wheels. Has anyone else seen recent sets that still use the slimy tires?

I'm like that too, except with that one infuriating piece. I would recommend ditching those altogether, as they discolor and damage other parts if left connected for long periods of time. I removed them from all of my models a few months ago and replaced them with the slotted kind. I just use them now as rocks for construction vehicles to scoop up. I use the Stack-on containers discussed here for the bulk of my spare parts. They're somewhat expensive, but are very space-efficient if you have several packs of them.

Nice review. This model has some quite unique ideas like the V8 engine (I think that's what the thing in the back is) and tool compartments, but at the same time I think it had room for improvement, especially the cockpit. The rear facing guns also look a little odd. I made various small changes to mine to fix these things. You can combine various modules from 6894, 6941 and 6954, which were the three original BT sets. The 6941 cockpit can attach to either of the other two. This "mix and match" feature is actually advertised on some of the boxes and manuals.

I wonder if participants of the major shows like Brickworld and Brickfair would qualify in that case, even though those are only once a year. I'm not part of any local LUG, but I do take my models to such events and promote the hobby in that way. I can kind of see where you're coming from. It's not clear what exactly the purpose of this service is, and as you said, Lego is ultimately no more than a fun hobby and should remain that way. Although in its current form, this service has too many and too strict rules to be of much use anyway.

I like how a lot of modern Technic sets are designed from the ground up with motorization in mind. The best example of this is the use of transmission ring switches to control two functions from one manual knob, as seen on this set or 8294, instead of using two manual knobs/cranks as was typically done in the past. I think the last time we saw something like this was way back in the early 80s, when some sets included differentials even though they didn't have engines.

That is an amazing collection and display setup. I like how you have some custom models (like mine ) among the official ones too. Do you have issues with dust in your house? The black shelves looks very nice, but one possible issue with them is that dust shows up easily on that color. Do you make any attempt to separate the old and new grays in your storage? You're one of the few people I have seen with a large amount of Technic from both eras. I find that I can easily distinguish between normal bricks, plates and beams without a side-by-side comparison, but I have a harder time with the non-ABS gears and bushes, so I keep those apart. Nice. I use one of these too, mostly for electric and pneumatic parts and various oddly shaped pieces that don't fit in my main parts area.

I've seen this on Brickshelf before. This is one of my favorite trial trucks due to its fairly compact size, and it still has all the functionality of larger models. It has inspired me to start working on my own in fact.

This was discussed earlier and is in the list, but it's not an issue anymore on current sets. More or less, yeah. When a part change like this is made, a given set usually but not always contains only one variety of the piece.

That set definitely looks like Power Miners with different colors, but that's not actually a bad thing in my book. I thought the Power Miners sets had some good ideas, but I never liked their color scheme at all. I also notice the transparent canopy in an interesting color (i.e. not trans-black or clear), which is good to see as well. If nothing else, those always make their way onto Bricklink and are useful for space MOCs. This was actually first done with Exploriens. (and the whole theme kind of revolved around it)