nicjasno

That's the idea. In lego, you don't realyy need shocks. Springs are enough. But one must adjust the amount of springs to the weight of the car, and when making the suspension, one must take into account, that it'll set a bit when the vehicle is put on the ground. This means, that one won't know how much spring force is required untill the completion of the model.

Those dampened shocks are useless. They compress easily and extend very slowly. But yeah, a car should not be on fully extended shocks when static. I had that same problem with the mustang. It just stubled across. Now it squats a bit when you put it on the ground, and the suspension works so much better.

There are no special pieces needed for custom steering geometry. The real thing necessary to give you freedom of suspension geometry are proper wheels with big deep rims.

8t gears should not be used in gearboxes that are supposed to transmit power.

Not even close to a corvette. This looks like something virgil exner designed for chrysler. Like a plymouth volare or something like that :)

You don't need to cut the teeth out of a 16t clutch. You just use the extension ring and glue that into the hollowed out center of the 20t gear. I did a 4 speed+reverse with that setup. I however used also a clutch extension glued to a 12tooth gear, for one of the gears, so that the 24tooth gear was the largest one. i meshed: 1st 12 > 24 2nd 16 > 20 3rd 20>16 4th 24 > 12

From what i can see of your front suspension, you did the exact oposite that you should. You spaced the wheels even out with a bushing, instead of positioning the wheel as close to the pivot as possible. Please fix. I like how you managed to recreate the looks of the car though, especially the front.

Very few road cars have f1 style pushrods. Lamborghini/pagani have the springs mounted transversly, not longitudinally, which eliminates the need for ball joints in the springs. Hell, even f1 cars nowdays don't need balljoints in the pushrods, since the springs are torsion bars and can be actuated directly. The trick is to add complexity without complicating stuff. Keep the mechanisms simple.

The challenger certanly looked better than it was. And it was too big and too heavy. I don't want to make such a big model again. The mustang wheels are the same size as the unimog wheels, they just have a much bigger and deeper rim, that is perfect for fitting suspensions inside. As for the pushrods... every liftarm can be made into a pushrod. We don't need specialised pieces for that.

All of this is easily achievable if we get better wheels.

I fully agree. A model also does need to look good, to get the inner workings to shine. It's a complete package.

For complex suspension setups wheels don't need to be any bigger than the ones on the new crane. They need to have bigger rims, that are "deep", so you have room inside for balljoints and stuff like that. Right now most of the suspensions are bad, because everything needs to be outside the rim, due to lack of space.

The problem is, that in the unimog not even the suspension is really authentic. And it's very poorly executed.

Not necessarily. The limiting factor with suspension in lego are in my opinion the wheels, and the lack of space inside the rims.

The problem with the 8448 was also, that the chassis was the weakest of all supercars to date. It was like chewing gum, torsionally bending. That's why the suspension needed to be so soft. I have no idea how the 8070 compares to that, or the ferrari modesl, because i totally lost interest in them, since the same suspension was recycled over and over and over... Maybe someone who bought them can comment.

allanp: i'm fully onboard with the lambo idea. In white.

Nah... An evora perhaps.

I'd love to see a white mid engined supercar with new wheels and low profile tires in the style of a lotus elise or something similar.

I'd be interested how you executed the steering. Got any pics? Very nice little car. I like it.

All the work in revising the wheel hubs was for nothing. They are shit. Just a new rotor for the small turntable would have been enough and would have saved a lot of cost. And the CV joints do not have enough articulation to be usable for FWD vehicles. Even awd vehicles need 4 wheel steering to be able to negotiate turns with those CV joints. All the while the brilliant 8880 cv joint design remained unused, except in helicopters and the 8880 of course. This is so frustrating to watch. So much potential, wasted. And the 8448 rims.. while nice size, they have an ugly dated design and the stud holes are not 1 stud thick, preventing you to mount them on the new wheel hubs. What are they thinking?

And the suspension parts need to be more versatile, allowing for many different suspension setups. I do have an idea how such a part needs to look like. Also new lower A arms, that would be able to function in bionicle models aswell, and many other applications.

The thing is, that the 8880 is an old model and hard to come by. SO we need something new. And when doing a new model, why not create parts, that everybody needs/wants anyway. If done properly, those parts (wheel hubs, wheels with larger diameter rims, different sized clutch gears, better cv joints...) can be reused in a plethora of models for the next decade. Everybody and their dog is longing for better, more realistic looking low profile wheels with bigger rims anyway.

For a FWD car we need different wheel hubs with 8880 CV joints, 8448 style deep rims and wheels with the overall diameter of the unimog tires. And of course different sized clutch gears.

Indeed. But it was convenient, because the 4 wheel steering system was probably interfering with some sensible gear placement.

More a generic one, inspired my many real ones. Nothing specific, unless a car manufacturer wants to get onboard with a license, like they did with the unimog.