CP5670

This is quite cool, but I think this can already be done with standard Lego components. You can use the NXT servo motor to measure the state of the switch. The main challenge is to make a switch that is actually small and compact. Yeah, it can be made of ABS like all the other pneumatic parts. As discussed here a while ago, Lego pneumatics aren't designed to work at more than 30-40psi anyway, and the tubes pop off automatically beyond that.

Yes. The new ones are so cheap and common on Bricklink that you might as well replace them if you have the older variety. This type of gearbox still has its uses. The driving ring gearboxes are more compact and were used in 8880 and all subsequent super cars, but the kind of gearbox seen in this set is actually more useful for making automatic transmissions.

It depends on how far they need to go down. As I described earlier, if it isn't too far, you can make them extend outward and come down simultaneously. The trick is to have two parallel telescoping bars on each outrigger that move out at different speeds. The top one should move out faster and further.

1: 6503 Sprint Racer 2: 8868 Airtech Claw Rig 3: I lost 12 mid-90s minifigs in a school project that seemingly got stolen. 4: Annihilator (second thing in my signature) 5: I can name tons of these, but I got most of them from ebay later on. The only big one left is the 6399 Airport Shuttle, which I probably won't ever get due to its exorbitant prices. 6: Black Hole (first thing in my signature) 7: As a kid I often made these big spaceships combining everything in my collection. One of them was so flimsy that I couldn't actually lift it from the ground without the whole thing breaking up. 8: It's hard to give a single best MOC, but anything by Dennis Bosman is awesome.

Maybe you didn't notice them. See this for a picture and the typical symptoms to look for. At this point, I doubt the colors will ever be fixed completely. TLG has surely realized by now that most people haven't even noticed the quality reduction, and they have little incentive to fix it. Some colors do at least seem to be improving, although very slowly.

You're probably right, but I'm going to try anyway. I always like the challenge of trying to cram functionality into a small place. The manually operated outriggers are less excusable though, and those are what prevent this model from being a real classic for me. It wouldn't have been too hard to make those come down automatically if the chassis had been designed with it in mind. I'm going to try to add that in as well, but one problem with studless models in general is that they are hard to modify without making major structural changes to everything.

See my earlier posts on this. It's possible to do it all with two axles.

The closest Lego brand store to DC is the Tysons Corner one, and I know the Washington metro doesn't really go there. An extension in that direction is being built but is several years away from completion. Although if you just want to buy standard Lego sets, any standard toy store chain will have them.

That makes more sense, if by "prices" you mean the final prices paid by the customer. Those will obviously be higher because of the shipping (but that may be nullified by the lack of sales tax, depending on where you live), but there isn't any reason for the advertised base price of a set to be higher than retail. In any case, as I said earlier the problem I have is how they calculate the shipping cost. It's estimated from the price of your order and in discrete price brackets instead of going by the volume or weight, which can give something quite different from the true shipping cost. I have in the past dropped out small sub-$5 items from my orders because they were putting the total cost into the next shipping price bracket.

You do realize that the customers pay for shipping on S@H items and not TLG, right? I can understand that they may signed distribution contracts that prohibit them from lowering the S@H prices below certain levels, but on a per-unit basis it is certainly more cost effective to sell online. TLG sells Lego through retail outlets because of the widespread exposure and high volume sales they get out of it, not because they make more profit per set.

I mostly only buy at S@H to get exclusives or the 50% clearance sales that Eilif mentioned. Everything else comes off ebay. As an NJ resident I have to pay sales tax as well as shipping, which means that it's rarely worth it to buy other items, and going to retail stores is too time consuming for my liking. The main gripe I have with S@H is how they calculate shipping based on the cost of the order instead of volume. This makes specialty parts like PF elements cost way too much to ship. Not really. This is more than offset by the fact that TLG gets to keep all the S@H revenue themselves, without any middleman. A lot of small companies sell their products online exclusively for this reason.

I would be interested in the 8455 if it was local, but shipping that overseas would be prohibitively expensive these days.

This set is pretty nice. It's similar to the old 8858 Rebel Wrecker and has the same functions, but is slightly larger and still significantly cheaper. 8858 was rather overpriced and was $70 at its time. I like the big trans-red lights too. As you said, this is also one of the rare blue models TLG has made. I can only think of four or five reasonably large blue sets over the years, even going back to the early 1980s.

If a set has just recently been discontinued, you can usually still find it on ebay and BL for around the original price. I got my 8275 like that. Although a set like Market Street might be more expensive since it was a S@H exlcusive.

Market Street has been around for two years now, so it wouldn't really be surprising or "frightening" if they discontinue it. The worst case of a major set in recent times was probably the 8275 Bulldozer, which was pulled off S@H in the US after only about 8 months. I think it was available longer in other countries.

Yes, you won't get a replacement for that now. Have you tried to see if it works? I once had leaked acid on a control center's battery contacts, but it came off pretty easily with alcohol. The unit has continued to work fine since then. As for the switch, you may just be seeing its normal behavior. If you push it down at a certain angle, it's supposed to stay down, and it pops back up if you pull it outwards.

Whoops, I didn't notice that it was already posted there.

Following up on this discussion, there is an interesting post today at TechnicBricks on the issue with the controller. TLG is actually doing a recall on all existing units, although it's hard to know how serious the heating problem is.

Yes, it's arguably the most intricate Technic set TLG has made and has numerous geartrains going across the length of the model. Until now, it was the only set to use a 4-way transmission to have a motor perform 4 functions.

I just passed 100000 with my latest purchase. I keep fairly detailed records of all the Lego I buy.

I have two of these sets and the boxes do indeed say 190622 on it, so it should be the right one. Like most of the L&S sets from that era, the tray was quite large and covered the whole box.

The newer ones, which were introduced in 1990, have slots in the middle. If you aren't tearing your hair out trying to disassemble the model, you probably have the new kind. The old ones have an extremely strong grip and require other pieces to remove. They also cause various types of damage to other bricks if left in place for a long time or removed at the wrong angle. I recently took them off all of my models which used them, and replaced them with the modern kind. In most cases, each country had its own name for a given set. The US and UK had different names, and even in countries with other languages, the names often meant something quite different.

These can be combined into a single function. The idea I had was to add a second set of extending bars below the existing ones, which move out at a slightly lower speed, and connect the outrigger ends to both bars. The differences in the bars' positions when they are extended would allow the outriggers to come down. Thinking about that makes me go more like than . A new set that rivals the Space Shuttle in mechanical complexity would have been awesome, but this set has fallen a bit short of that mark. They could have done it by having part of the transmission on the turntable, as I described earlier. I'm going to try to redesign the crane arm to incorporate that, once I get the set.

It's actually in one of the Mania Magazines, the January 1996 issue. I don't have a scanner handy but I took a picture.

From my experience on other forums, it sends the report by email to all moderators for that forum section. I get one or two of those emails every day from another place where I'm a moderator.