Erik Leppen

Personally I'd find 1. quite boring. Household devices are usually not "cool", and I'm afraid if you try to make them cool, you get pretty childish results, like a vacuum cleaner with rotating eyes. Also, I'd rather build something cool than something useful. Which brings me to 2., which would definitely be cool. It will be difficult and certainly out of many comfort zones, but I think this will be very interesting and educational experience for many builders. 3. is also interesting, but I think too broad. It has the major disadvantage that people can just pick what they're good at (GBC modules, for example), the advantage is that whatever the results are, you're bound to get inspiration for future contests. However, comparing the entries will be very hard. I would pick 2. It's focused, so that you can compare the entries, yet still gives plenty of options. Also, it's cool :P You'll have to think about non-Technic part usage though. I know that if I'd want to build, say, a tiger, I'd be tempted to use system bricks for shaping.

Yes, it's a neat solution. The main problem with it is that it creates a ~0.2 stud gap between the two rings. This could be solved by mounting one of the rings out-of-system (0.2 stud higher or lower), for example by inserting 2 plates between the ring and its mounts. Fortunately, 42082 will provide us with another solution. As I understood it, they used train wheels there.

I have never seen such vehicles. What are they? What are they for? How do they work? Do you have bigger images (The images you linked to are too small to see how these things work). Do you have manufacturer's names or type numbers of those vehicles?

Or, now I come to think of it, custom 7L suspension arms, for example by extending the 6L arms with thin 3L or 4L liftarms. But I don't know how strong that would be. But then you could increase the 2/4 distance ratio not to 3/5 but to 4/6. But I have no idea what could be in the way of moving the mounting points for the suspension arms inwards. If I would have known that this image would get quoted so many times, I'd have taken some more time to make a better image Also, please note that the perpendicular-idea is not exact, because the perpendicular distance changes as the angle between the parts changes. (As a rule of thumb, compressing the spring should ideally not decrease the length of the red arrow.)

Maybe for the next supercar we should think of colours. Dark azure and dark blue is a signature color scheme for the real Chiron. Orange (or lava orange, or whatever it's called) was a big color for the Porsche. As orange became more common a few years before the Porsche, dark azure was introduced around 2016 I think, and dark blue made their appearence in the ocean explorer 42064, and I believe we even had some of the dark tan interior panels in a recent Star Wars set, I think we should look for new or revived colors in the future. If new panels or other Technic parts suddenly appear in an interesting color, it might be a prelude to a new supercar in that color.

See the go-kart set, 42048, which has exactly that.

Getting back at the front suspension - wouldn't it be possible to mod it by using the 6x2 suspension arms instead of the 5x1 ones? The hinge point for the arms would move one stud inwards, but the springs would mount to 3 studs away form the hinge instead of 2, so the leverage of the springs would be 3/5 = 0.6, instead of 2/4 = 0.5, making the suspension approximatly 20% stronger. Wouldnt that be enough to fix the problems? I don't know how hard it would be to move the mounting points for the suspension arms, but it's merely a suggestion I haven't seen here yet. As for @Didumos69's gearbox… someone should really build it to test. If it's really working as I expect, I don't get how it can be that a whole design team paid to do this works a year on a model, and then a random dude on the internet fixes a cleaner-designed gearbox with fewer parts in at most a few weeks of his spare time (ignoring for the moment the years spent to learn the craft), while, seemingly, requiring one fewer new mould (I see no yellow extender).

What tires me is the discussion-about-the-discussion here. If I open this topic, I wnt to read about the Chiron and things relating to that. If you want to talk about the forum mentality of members or whatever, go ahead and open up a new topic. The big difference between the criticisms on the Chiron and this meta-discussion is that the former is on-topic (yes, I know, my post is double-meta, so double off-topic, but I leave it to the moderators to decide what to do). This is the Chiron topic - let's talk about the set and things related to it. Yet, I always have the feeling that that's exactly how Technic (or any other theme, for that matter) sets are marketed. It's a rare thing to see official Lego communication suggest that sets can be modified, expanded upon, combined, or totally transformed into one's own imagined stuff. Almost the only call to creativity we see TLC utter nowadays is the suggestion to join sets together (like modular buildings) - except maybe for lines like Classic, but I'm not really into that. The recent Make your own Brickheadz and the somewhat-older Architecture Studio are very welcome deviations from this norm. Almost all other sets are presented as finished models. And if Lego markets a set as an as-is, complete-out-of-the-box model, then it's fair to review it as such. And if you do that, then sagging front suspension with only 4 mm of travel remaining and a front that hits the ground (even if not for everyone) is, to me, a design fault. (I'm normally not as critical to these things in other sets, but let's not forget it's TLC themselves who presented 42083 to be as-good-as-it-gets, which, clearly, it isn't. I believe 8070's B-model also had a front that touched the ground when fully pressed, but at least bounced back normally (from what I have seen - I don't own the set), and this is the B model of a regular everyday set. We all accept cut corners in a B-model. With Chiron, we're talking about a self-proclaimed cream of the crop with seemingly no compromises. If a model is meant as a base for modding, then marketing/communication should reflect that.

HOG for steering Operation of the wing from the cabin Some kind of brake system (that would have been cool!) Doors that open/close with an interesting mechanism, such as 42069, or, preferably, reintroducing the transparent damped spring cylinder and using that for the doors And if we are talking cars in general, instead of particularly this Chiron: Suspension ride height adjustment Rear wheel steering Rear wheel steering dependent on the selected gear Wing angle dependent on the selected gear Folding roof Adjustable seats Scissor doors, wing doors or any other interesting type of doors As you see, there is a total abundance of possible functions for a car. More than one has room for. So from a technical standpoint, there's no excuse for a lack of functions. Compare to 8070, which has no gearbox, but, at 1300 parts, has many other interesting functions to compensate. As it stands, the Chiron focused on the elaborate gearbox, which I think is absolutely marvellous. It's superb to see such an intricate gearbox in an official set, whose gear ratio ratios all seem to be quite sensible and similar to how AFOLs would do things. However (yes, there's a but), this set seems to have stopped innovating when the gearbox was done, which is kind of a shame. Maybe that's how TLC wants to do things - one breakthrough at a time. This whole gearbox thing seems to be done now. It's not going to get much better than this, probably. Now, for the next supercar (2020?) please try something else. A brake system, for example. Or cool scissor doors. (Please do a Koenigsegg. :P) Or gear-dependent rear-wheel steering. And, there's no excuse for the sloppy front suspension. It looks rushed - it sags and it doesn't seem to use the whole range of the spring. I do somewhat agree that it's not "really" Technic. (Yes, it's Technic, but at 40% of the build, all major functions are done. The rest is bodywork and some small moving bits) And if it's not really Technic, why is it even Technic? I'd really like to see more out of their line of Creator cars, next to the Ferrari F40 and Caterham sets. Not just Minis and Beetles, however interesting and iconic they are, but cars out of the Speed Champions series, but increased to the scale of the F40/Caterham. And actually, I would personally expect non-Lego fans - petrolheads - to prefer a brick-built set over the paneled Technic-y look of the Chiron - the F40 looks more Lego-like to a non-Lego-fan. As a bonus, they're much smaller sets, which means people can buy more sets before their shelf space is full.

Probably not. The old 2L driving ring was 2 studs long and its displacement was 0.5 stud. This reuired a 0.5 stud deep rim inside the 16t gears. This was possible, because the old dark-gray 16t gears were one-sided. The red 16t is two-sided, so the groove is less than 0,5 stud deep, so the driving ring cannot wholly fit in. The reason the new 3L driving ring works, is because it's slightly shorter than 3 studs. As the new blue 20t is also two-sided, it has the same properties, and therefore I think won't work with the old driving ring.

The 24t gears should be an exact fit, if this is the geometry used. The angles in the engine block piece are the same as in the 4x6 bent liftarms, which implies that the distance between the axles is exactly 3 studs. (One could imagine a 3x3 T beam placed parallel to the existing one, moved 3 studs to the top, so the that the "bottom" hole of the T is the upper crankshaft. This should be an exact fit.) If the gears are too tight, I would say it's a problem in the parts, not in the design. Because the design seems fine.

What if you would use 11L beams? Also, 3x11 flat panels exist in dark blue, so 11beam + 3x11 + 11beam would be a viable alternative.

First tiny proposal: replace the blue 3L friction pins holding the front suspension arms with tan 3L frictionless pins to make the suspension smoother. I expect much of the sagging is because of the friction.

I think the Bugatti contains 900 more parts because the Porsche sold well and hence TLC could step up their game. I think that if the Porsche didn't sell well, we wouldn't have had a 3600-part supercar.

The problem with this whole leaking thing is that if 99 people behave (by not leaking) and 1 doesn't (by leaking), then as a group, the 100 people together have leaked. What's in he best interest of the group (not leaking) is opposite to what is in the best interest of the individual (leaking). That's why there will always be leaks, and this can be beaten only in one way - don't give anything away. There are only leaks because there have been sets in the wild before Jun 1. TLC shouldn't have shipped anything before Jun 1 if they wanted to prevent leaks. I understand they aren't happy, but there is simply no way to guarantee secrecy if you give anything away, even to people you trust. If it's in the wild, it's in the wild. That's how things work in the internet age.

Not if they'd chosen to release one or two colors less. Sure, bright green is cool now we have it, but we haven't seen it yet in any other Technic set and nobody would have missed it if it weren't there, so those 11 pieces could have been saved to be used to fill out the parts availability of another color. The same argument holds for medium azure and dark azure. They should have picked one, and stuck with it. Instead of 10 parts in this color and 20 parts in that color, we could have had 30 parts in a cool new bright blue color. (But until medium azure returns, I think they have already considered medium azure a mistake and switched to dark azure.)

Keep in mind that the jet (42066) is another kind of blue though. Dark azure, which the Chiron uses, is in the rally car 42077 and the 6x6 tow truck 42070.

I hadn't realized you could fit 12t gears meshing with the blue 20t's that way, @BusterHaus! I thought it wouldn't fit, but as the driving ring is less than 2L, it should indeed just fit.

Thats an interesting observation, @Ngoc Nguyen. It's as if they waited for a set to "demonstrate" the versatility of a part. The BWE 42055 used the yellow 11x11 gear quadrants essentially in three different ways. Turntable; bucket wheel; guide rail. 42043 which introduced the new sliding gearracks, used them in two different ways too. Also, wasn't it the same with the 13L gear racks and 42009, which had a lot of those (steering and outriggers)? The other thing is that I have the idea that sometimes the set a new piece seems to be specifically designed for, isn't always the first set we see. There have been dark-tan Technic panels in some Star Wars sets. Now the 42083 shows them in the interior. I suspect that dark-tan Technic panels have been produced for 42083, and then Lego designers searched for other possible use-cases for these parts and found out Star Wars buildable figures could use them. I think the same happens for the black 5x7-frame, that will reoccur 18x in the Chiron. We saw it first in a smaller set, where there didn't seem to be a particular reason to introduce a recolor.

That's a really nice way to compare the two, @JunkstyleGio! To be honest, I have found orange to be much of a "screamy" color anyways, which makes any gaps very obvious. That's the advantage of a darker color - it hides gaps better. In any case, I think I would have been more likely to buy your dual-blue Porsche than the official orange one. I'm really happy with the colors TLC chose for the Chiron - they are unusual colors, and every set I buy will turn out to be a parts pack anyway, so I'm glad to know that with this purchase I will be expanding my collection of two interesting colors.

Same as the Porsche, probably.

Actually -- I thought for a moment they were sand blue.

Maybe we should call idler gears the same as techlug.fr calls them in their reviews: "roues folles" in French, or, in English "crazy wheels" Sorry, was not on topic. It works the same as the 16t red gear - it has a round hole and little ridges on the inside that can be engaged by driving rings. What's interesting is that for the first time since set 8880, we have two different sized gears that can engagae with driving rings. That means that for the first time, you can create two different gear ratios using only two axles - the axle holding the driving ring holds the 16t and 20t idlers, and the other axle holds for example a 16t that meshes with the red 16t, and a 12t that meshes with the blue 20t. Then, switching the driving ring either way changes the speed of the second axle - without needing a third set of gears. Edit: here's what I mean:

Yes, I think you're right. I think the gearboxes are so-to-say, "in series"; in that drive goes through the first gearbox (1 driving ring; 2 speeds), and then through the second gearbox (2 driving rings; 4 speeds). What I speculate, is the following: Orange selector 1 drives driving rear A and B. These are coupled and at 90 degree offset, so exactly one of A and B is engaged; the other is neutral. Orange selector 2 drives driving ring C. This one will always need to be engaged to have a link between engine and wheels. if C is neutral, the car is in gear N. Driving ring C is only switched between gears 4 and 5. This results in the following possible combinations: A left; B neutral; C left - gear 1 A neutral; B left; C left - gear 2 A right; B neutral; C left - gear 3 A neutral; B right; C left - gear 4 A left; B neutral; C right - gear 5 A neutral; B left; C right - gear 6 A right; B neutral; C right - gear 7 A neutral; B right; C right - gear 8 That's how I think things will work. It could of course be that C is the least-signiticant bit instead of the most-significant bit, but this, I think, is the principle. Hopefully, one of these 8 gears will be the reverse. How this would work, I have no idea. But there are people much more acquainted with gearboxes than I am, so maybe someone else could speculate on that. This is, of course, given the speculation that there are 3 driving rings. Maybe there's a fourth, to handle the Forward/Neutral/Reverse switching.

With 3 driving rings, you can have 8 different speeds (2 x 2 x 2).