CP5670

Looks good, the park is my favorite part of it. I use mostly old gray roads too, mainly because of the various special baseplates that appeared in those colors. Several sets came with such baseplates that have no equivalents in dark gray (Klaus has a 6394 there, which was one such set). This also applies to green baseplates to a lesser extent.

The wolverine looks great, but there needs to be a Kane.

Good explanation of this. However, as you said there will always be a little bit of slack in the gears, and in practice you can in fact get the wheels to line up perfectly on most 4+ wheel steering setups. This set uses 12 tooth gears on the steering racks though, as opposed to the smaller 8 tooth gears used on most sets in the past. That area is usually the main source of the slack, so it may be harder to get the wheels perfectly straight on this set.

It looks like we'll get considerably more people than last year, possibly over 600 at this rate. I paid a while ago, although I only added my MOCs yesterday. It's the same stuff as last time so far, although I have some new monorail stations that I'm still debating whether to bring or not.

That would take some serious skill if that's actually what he did. Those holes are tiny, and you need to somehow unwind the stickers again once they're inside.

I certainly agree with this, but I largely avoid clone brands just for quality reasons and only use them when I must have something that doesn't exist in Lego. I am ultimately a brick quality freak. I don't particularly care whether the bricks are Lego, Megabloks, Brickarms or whatever else, but I want them to conform to certain objective quality standards. I've had to revise those standards in recent years since the quality I want (achieved by Lego in the 1990s) is no longer provided by anyone, but Lego still has a slight edge over all the clones I know of. I rarely buy used Lego for the same reason and tend to be very picky about scratches, nicks and other types of wear on bricks.

If you are in Michigan, I guess that isn't the issue. I'm pretty sure the Lego distribution in the US is all done from the same locations. The only other thing that comes to mind is possibly cold temperatures in your basement. Pictures of these problems would be very useful. The head cracks sound especially strange because the head plastic is fairly deep on the sides, thicker than most other types of bricks. As for arm cracks, I've seen them before but like the torsos they are limited to heavily used and worn minifigs in my experience.

I'm going to replace the black knob gear with an 80s style crank right away when I get the set, as I have done with all recent sets. That makes manually operated models much more fun to play with.

Bricklink's server is pretty dodgy. I regularly see it go offline for a minute or so at a time. Just wait a bit and it will come up again.

Great review. Like Siegfried said, this easily looks like the best set of the year to me. I think 8258 has too many shortcomings to be a true classic, but this 8265 is nearly perfect. I will get this and other sets in a month, when I can take advantage of the Brickfair discounts. The mechanics of this set are actually more complex and interesting than 8459 due to the LAs, and for $80 it's quite a large and detailed model. It would be nice to have the cab steering wheel work like 8459, but that's very minor. How does it compare to 8459's steering in terms of overall smoothness? I think 8459 has very nice steering.

I rated myself 4 on that test, but ended up with a 0. I even adjusted some of my things down after reconsidering my answers and still got a 0. Illegal techniques are the only thing I'm fairly picky about, as far as my own MOCs go. My collection is expensive and is still primarily composed of 80s and 90s MISB sets acquired off ebay, so I want to keep the pieces in perfect shape, and the strength of a model is always a big priority for me (probably comes from being a Technic builder). If I mod any pieces, it would be common ones that are easy to replace. I would probably do those things too, provided that I could achieve a level of quality and polish at least equal to a brand new Lego piece. This is hardly ever the case though.

It sounds like you are on public connections though. I've seen this kind of issue on such connections in the past. A bad DNS setup is the other thing that comes to mind, which you may be able to do something about as the previous poster said.

I would be interested to know where you live. Apart from unusual air or light conditions, which can certainly have an effect on such things, there is a possibility that sets (or portions of sets) sold in some countries are produced at different factories and have different issues. The minifig problems you describe sound much more severe than anything I've experienced or heard about, especially on the display models. The torsos may crack after heavy use, although they certainly shouldn't go bad that quickly. I have a few broken torsos from the 80s when I was a kid, but modern torsos have extra supports inside and should in theory be less prone to it. On the other hand, I've never seen a cracked minifig head before. Where exactly are the crack(s) forming? TLG has a replacement order form on their site and is pretty good about that. If you ask for something with a known problem, chances are the replacement will have the same issues, but the minifigs are not generally known to break.

I should have probably phrased that better. I meant the entire catalog of Lego pieces up to now, both past and present.

1: It should be something that TLG could in principle make into an actual set with the current brick palette. That means no clone pieces, third party pieces or illegal techniques. 2: In terms of illegal techniques, yes, but I'm open to anything else. The main thing I want to have in my MOCs is long-term strength and stability, without losing the ability to modify them (so no gluing). Part mods are fine if they are done professionally and look like official pieces, but I can't manage that so I don't mod anything myself. In the past I avoided clone brands for quality reasons, but Lego no longer has a clear advantage there and there are some useful clone parts out there that don't exist in Lego. 3: The same as any other MOC. I can always appreciate a good creation, even if it's not something I would make myself.

The worst case I've encountered was 8421 (2005), in which multiple shades of dark gray were often used on the same page. There were places where one dark gray piece was indistinguishable from black in one step and the exact same part in the next step (already placed on the model) looked closer to light gray. Many other sets around that time had similar issues. The black and dark gray were still close in my 8275 (2008 copy), but the shades at least seemed to be consistent throughout the instructions and I didn't notice anything quite as blatant there. However, you may be right that we are simply getting more accustomed to it. I don't actually have many recent sets where two colors could be easily mixed up, but from what you're saying this is still an issue. I will update the first post. Thanks for the link. That looks exactly like the problem in the 80s. From the arm notches, it's obvious that those minifigs are being produced at a different factory. I see that some people there are encountering the color issue too, similar to the classic space torso Svelte posted about. The torsos I have gotten in recent (non-exclusive) sets have looked good, in contrast to the situation a year ago when every torso in the affected colors was translucent. Maybe these Chinese factories still have problems that have been fixed in the other production plants.

This is actually one of several things I like about studded construction. It looks and feels like genuine Lego, and fits well into the Lego system as a whole. I use a fair amount of both types of construction in my MOCs though.

This 5292 motor is very powerful, even more so than the PF XL according to Philo's tests. It runs at a high speed though and will need to be geared down for most purposes, so in practice its mechanical power is probably similar to the XL. It's an energy hog and is best run from a wall-powered source like the train speed regulator. I doubt it's still in production, but the PF XL is probably a better choice anyway given its lower cost and more convenient dimensions.

I added in some new stuff to the first post. Note that I will generally add an entry on something there after at least two people confirm it (including possibly me), in order to exclude isolated glitches. Yes, that dark look is characteristic of the bad red. It sucks that the most important piece turned out like that. That bag is quite recent, so either red is still defective or TLG is doing the printing on older stock of red torsos. The helmet and legs seem to be the good red though, so it's hard to tell what is going on. Wow, I haven't heard of the scorpion case before. This is more of a problem with the S@H service than with actual Lego products though. The color issue in the instructions is well known. This started around 2002 when TLG changed the appearance of the instruction manuals, apparently in order to better distinguish dark gray (a color that was rarely used until the late 90s) from light gray. Have you noticed this in recent sets? This was very annoying around 2005 and 2006, but it seems to have improved since then. This printing inconsistencies and variations in brightness go back well into the 80s, if I'm understanding you correctly. I still see this today, but it's a lot better than it once used to be. I've seen Jinzo and others complain about this too, although it has apparently improved in the last year or so from what I have heard.

The chrome gold bricks look sweet. I hope they are just normal bricks though, in which case I will definitely want to get them. It's nice to see a Blacktron 1 guy in the new classic minifig pack, but I'm sure it will be priced at $20 like the earlier ones and will be of no interest to me. I actually have a lot of Blacktron minifigs already, more than most other space themes, since the SP1 sets came with a bunch of them.

It's probably the latter. The main new thing is the color sensor, which you can buy separately anyway. If they have made changes to the NXT firmware, I'm guessing the new one will be available on the Lego site at some point.

I can certainly appreciate 100% studless MOCs, even though I don't usually build such models myself. I agree that completely studless models are hard to build, not because of the part selection but because of how they are built inside-out instead of bottom-to-top. It forces you to think several steps ahead to end up with strong and compact assemblies. I don't think this is a good thing for official Technic sets, but as far as MOCs go it makes for an interesting challenge. I'm not sure what is so special about that engine though. I see the 1.5 dark gray pins used as stoppers, but there will still be a small amount of slack there and it would be better to just use the piece specifically designed to hold the engine blocks in place.

Well, that's just because the set name is stupid. True 4WD with suspension is difficult to achieve on a model of this size (although not impossible).

I made a very rough MLCad drawing of what I mean, just showing the basic concept: Both light gray beams should come out at the same time, but the top one should move slightly faster than the bottom one, with something like a 5:4 gear ratio. The stabilizer should be attached to the top beam near the gear, in the same way as is currently done on 8258. As the beams extend outwards, the displacement between them will make the gear turn, which will do the same thing as the manual knob gear in the model's existing mechanism. This won't generate much downward force, but 8258's existing mechanism doesn't do that either. This should be pretty reliable as long as the beams are held in place securely in the truck's main chassis. A similar kind of mechanism can be made the other way around, with the rack above the gear. In fact, that might actually work better since the gear would be pushing up against the rack when the outrigger is deployed and reduce the chances of slipping.

Well, that early-2000s look with the open exterior and flex axles is the main attraction of Crowkillers' models. Official Technic sets don't necessarily look realistic in that respect, but are based on a particular style where the interior mechanisms of the model are intentionally made visible. The functions on this car are good, but pretty standard. They seem to be more or less identical to 8448, with front wheel steering and rear wheel drive.