CP5670

Great model. I love the custom stickers in particular. How did you make those?

Thanks. The model is certainly still built. I generally don't take apart major MOCs that took a long time to build. I have yet to find a good display arrangement for it though. It's too tall and wide to fit in the garage shelves I use for displaying everything else, so I have it in a separate room from the rest of my Space collection. It sits on two big boxes that I use to transport Lego stuff to events.

Great stuff as usual. The best set that year was probably 8082, especially the forklift which is still one of my favorite models. I remember that set had a very large number of crown and worm gears for its time. I have slightly modified the forklift so that both sets of wheels turn in opposite direction (tank-style) when the steering function is selected, which gives it much sharper turns on flat surfaces. As you said, the forks are heavily geared down and have a fair bit of lifting power. I'm actually using the 8818 stickers on the Blacktron Battrax here. You made some interesting comments on the 8857's rear wheels and axle joiners. It's obvious that they were already planning out the 8880 Super Car alongside the 1993 sets, as the wheels had the connections for the 8880's special CV joints. The concept for 8857 was unusual, and I only learned many years later what it was supposed to be. The rubber bumpers from 8824 appeared in some System sets later on. The 6473 Res-Q Cruiser has them, and I think one of the World City sets used them too. 8872 always seemed a bit lacking to me in comparison to other years' flagships, but in your article it looks a lot more mechanically interesting than I thought earlier. Maybe I should try to find one, as it's the only major 90s Technic set I don't have. The micromotor was unfortunately dodgy and prone to failure, especially the earlier ones. I have a few dead ones.

I do like that aspect of it. As I said earlier, it's the first set since the Space Shuttle to have four functions and two transmission rings off one motor like that. Also, having two independent geartrains on the turntable means that we might see some interesting gearing there. The standard way to do this for MOCs is to have a differential going through the turntable, but that has never actually been done in an official Lego set, at least not yet.

Nice review. The alien minifig is great, but the rest of the set is nothing remarkable. The traffic signs are a cool addition. It looks like this chase is supposed to be occurring on the ground. I would have liked to see a small windscreen on at least the alien ship though, and there are too many stickers as well. At least the computer panel should have been printed.

I thought the press guys were supposed to be streakers. Nice scenes and custom decals though. I notice that the MTron guys have come to the game too.

The aliens look awesome, as we had thought earlier. I agree that the police aren't so great. They should have used full helmets for them, which would also cover the faces in the back. I look forward to seeing pictures of the full sets.

Nice to see people still remember this. It does look similar to that imperial shuttle, but that basic tri-wing shape is fairly generic and is used in a lot of places. I actually got a few of these computer slopes from Bricklink and used them for this model, as they were a perfect fit here. I thought they were actually from one of the imperial shuttle sets, but it seems they weren't used there.

5.5 axles have actually been available for a long time (the only non-integer length they appear in), but they have a stopper in the middle that would probably prevent you from using them here.

The Bridgewater, NJ store is reasonably close to me (30 minute drive), but I haven't been there yet. The PAB wall would be the main attraction for me, and they would need to have stuff that is not available on the PAB site. I wish there was a way to tell what a store's PAB wall has before you actually go there. I wouldn't go over there just to buy sets.

8258 is quite expensive considering it only has one motor. That was initially looking like the best model to me, but I might wait until the price falls a bit, especially if the stabilizer design turns out to be crappy as was discussed earlier in the thread. I like 8263 because it's a concept that TLG hasn't done yet, although it's not clear what functions it has. 8265 looks nice enough, but I already have two of the older 8459/8464 sets and it looks like it has the same functionality as that model, despite being larger.

I just wonder if anything else besides the minifigs will be printed. The 1x1 control panel in the 5970 set looks like a sticker, but I can't tell about the police sign on the other vehicle. The patterns on the black fins are definitely stickers.

It came out in a fairly obscure Lego Education set last year. The set costs $55 and is not worth buying just for the gauge, but it includes a bunch of other pneumatic stuff. I got it from Bricklink for $19. As for how many air tanks you need, it really depends on how you're operating the pneumatic switches and how fast air pressure is generated. The "classical" way to use pneumatics (on sets without airtanks) is to first set a switch and then use the pump to move a piston. If you have an air tank in the setup, you do it the other way instead, first pumping several times to generate pressure in the tank and then flipping the switches to move the pistons a couple of times, until the pressure runs out. If you're doing it the first way or if your compressor is weak (like the one in 8868), more than one tank can be a bad thing since it will just take longer for pressure to build up. Multiple tanks are good for a fast and powerful compressor though, since you can keep the compressor running while playing with the switches and don't have to worry about the tanks filling up too fast. Even in that case though, I think two or three tanks should easily be enough. As for how to arrange them, putting them in parallel makes more sense, but I don't think it would make much of a difference in practice unless you have 4+ tanks. 8462, which was the only set to use multiple tanks, had them in series.

Yes, they are trans-clear. I have had two of those lying around for years and they matched up with the manometer's color, so I used them here.

I recently bought a Lego pressure gauge off Bricklink and wanted to do something with it, so I built this last night: This is an updated version of my old compressor, which I kept around my Lego collection and ran most pneumatic models from. It's built around the much more powerful 5292 RC motor and pumps faster and longer than the old one did. The two pumps cover their widest possible strokes and alternate through the rotation to reduce stress on the motor. Here is the manometer itself. It has no studs and only Technic hole connections, but is a lot of fun to play around with. However, at least on mine, the actual gauge is not aligned perfectly with the exterior casing. The white background paper is bent a little and the metal nozzle on the bottom sticks out at a slight angle. It may be possible to disassemble it and fix this, but it works fine in any case. Interestingly, I wasn't able to get the gauge to reach the full 60 psi, even if I just used a simple hand pump with it. The tubing always pops off around 45-50 psi (it's designed to do this according to the Technic manuals). The compressor will also reach about 50 psi before the tubing comes off somewhere, typically at one of the airtanks.

Another issue with the 12V line might come up depending on where you live. 12V was only ever released in Europe and the transformer is built into the control unit (unlike the 9V speed regulator), so there is only a European 220V plug on it. I'm not sure how you would use the thing in the US. Some of the 12V components were very cool though. The motorized gates and signal lights could be recreated in the 9V system, but I think 12V even had an automatic magnet decoupler. I agree with others that 9V or PF is your best bet overall though. They are cheaper and also more flexible and extendable in the long run.

From the picture, I think this set uses a PF medium motor, which makes a high pitched whine but is not too bad. It's not as quiet as the either of the gray 9V motors, but it's also considerably more powerful. The really noisy one is the black 9V RC motor. That produces a real racket if you run it off a wall powered source, like a speed regulator or control center, but it's also the most powerful Lego motor out there.

We were just talking about this last week in this thread: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?...15&start=15 I'm not sure how far he's come in fixing it.

This set looks reasonably good, but it's expensive and I think they have cut too many corners with it considering its price (non-brick roof, uncovered motor, somewhat generic minifigs and horses, etc.). I might get it if they offer it on a discount at some point. I don't think the set actually does this, but it would be fairly easy to make the horses go up and down. You can mount each one on a bar connected to pair of cam wheels, like a steam train piston. The wheels would rotate as the whole thing spins (since they would slide along the ground) and move the horse up and down with them.

You're right, I forgot that set was a Model Team set too. The stickers have been ruined on mine too, although I only used a handful of them, the ones that did not cover multiple parts.

The real issue here is not just about leaked pictures, but whether TLG should have any control over what gets discussed on EB. I don't think any of the things you mentioned are worth that tradeoff, especially when almost every other Lego site operates the same way. If you have a question for TLG, you can always go to one of the numerous other Lego forums for that. Besides, I don't think they have ever actually done anything in response to feedback on EB. I never got any responses to any of the questions I brought up in the "questions and concerns" thread, and eventually found the answers from other sources (and I'm certainly not saying it's Copmike's fault; I think he simply wasn't getting any real answers from the company). As I said before, this particular incident is not really a problem by itself, but this is only one of numerous instances I've seen of pictures being removed here. I remember having the same impression a few years ago (I used to post mainly on Lugnet back then), and that is actually one reason why I eventually chose EB over some other forums.

It's all a matter of degree. I might be concerned about their finances if TLG was a small startup for which a single mistake might put the company out of business, but this is far from the case. And like I said, it could equally go either way. If they are doing something I don't like, I would be happier if they stop doing it, which is only going to happen if they aren't making enough money from it. I don't see why those are even that bad. It's trivial to remove them if you don't like them. Some of the other recent "action features" have been pretty cool, like the Technic-like functions on the Power Miners vehicles. And I appreciate that, but I will note that although it may seem like you're giving a lot of freedom in comparison to other Lego forums, such rules are still pretty restrictive compared to most other forums on the internet at large. I'm not necessarily asking you to change your policy, but rather expressing why I think it's a bad idea. I still like EB for all its other qualities, and as I said, I have yet to see another Lego forum that is any better in this respect anyway. Okay, fair enough, his wording was probably over the top. But the issue he brought up does merit discussion, and he was the first to do so.

I can give you several examples of good financial health of the company having a detrimental effect of what I personally want to see from them. The flick fire missiles you brought up are one example, although I don't mind them much. Obviously, TLG is including those in so many sets because those sets are selling well, and as long as they keep making good profits with their current formulas, there won't be much change. But this is kind of beside the point. TLG is a multi-billion dollar company, and posting some images on a private forum (legally) is not exactly going to put them out of business or force them to dramatically change anything. Unlike some companies I can think of, TLG actually makes great products and doesn't need to rely on marketing for sales. Likening TLG to an individual person or a nonprofit organization here is a flawed premise. It doesn't "like" to do anything except make profits. That's what companies exist to do. It's not even run directly by the Christiansen family anymore.

I figured the packing machines might be arranged in some specific order since they pack the same parts (into sets) thousands of times, but it does make sense when you put it that way.

Nice. I guess a little extra strength can't hurt for a military vehicle. Some of the official Technic sets from the late 90s are very well built and could probably take a drop as well. 8446 and 8462 are a few that come to mind.