DLuders

I think the wheel size is fine as-is, since one needs some room for the suspension to work up-and-down over bumps. BricksOnWheels is already using one of the largest Lego tires ever made -- the foam-type 3740 "Tire 24 x 43 Technic": I held it against the 8110 Unimog U400's 92912 "Tire 94.3 x 38 R" just now in my basement, and the 92912 tire is ~1.5 studs wider and ~1.5 studs greater in diameter than the 3740 tire above:

@ Martin1965: For future reference, you should be aware of the Bricklink "Tire on Wheel Relationships" webpage. It shows which tires can fit on which wheels.

It's all discussed in detail in the TechnicBRICKS TechReview 13 (1/3 of the way down the page). Both pumps have 2-studs-long displacement; the design was changed to allow for mounting on the Unimog. To summarize, "Although the old pump cylinder is capable of a 2L displacement, it doesn't fit within a linear setup over a Technic beam."

New fashion accessories from the Brixit website:

Welcome to Eurobricks, Padawan Jason!

There are a lot of nice details of this German Fire Engine in the 45 pictures on your Flickr photoset. I lived in Berlin, Germany for 3 years and occasionally saw these MAN trucks roaring by. Nice MOC -- thanks for sharing the LDD file!

[bUMP] On his Facebook page, Sariel (Paul Kmiec) has revealed more about his upcoming (2012) Lego Technic book, to be published by No Starch Press. On January 29th, he wrote an "Update on the book: I have written over 90% of the content and I plan to reach 100% before February ends. Then there will be stuff like revisions, cover design and other things left to do. Finally, printing book for the first time can take up to two months. All in all, I hope you can see it released around May and with every passing week we are getting closer to the book being officially announced. The link here shows where to look to buy it. And yes, there will be some photos of my Ford GT40 in it." He added in the "Comments" that it will be available as a PDF eBook. The title has "...not yet formally approved so I'd rather not give it out yet. But it's something along the lines of "LEGO Technic" and "Guide"....The pagecount is unknown yet, but it's well over 70,000 words and several hundreds of figures. As for AFOLs, well, Blakbird [Eric Albrecht] is doing technical review for my book :)" From this "Word Count to Page" estimator, Sariel's book will be at least 85 pages long (not including pictures)! With "several hundreds of figures", it could end up being 200+ pages long. Assuming single-spaced 12-pitch Times New Roman text, 70,000 words divided by ~815 words per page = 85 pages. It's very likely going to be the best Lego Technic reference ever published! :thumbup:

I can see now how it generates the torque:

If you mean the faint white "outlines" behind the models, no I have never seen the "blueprints" in a separate file available to the public. From Brickset and Peeron:

Nice tow truck! Using the link behind the picture above, I see all 13 pictures on the Flickr photoset. It took over 3 months to complete this beast:

Good MOC! It's hard to generate enough torque to lift a bridge that big:

I've noticed that Brickshelf has been down all weekend. The fellow who moderates the site rarely "makes public" new files on the weekends, so he/she may not even know that the server has crashed. Look for it to get better on Monday.

I like the idea of Rebrickable hosting the files. MOCpages has a slow server, and new entries on Brickshelf takes 2 days to get moderated and "made public". Flickr is quite diverse and easy to use, but it cannot host LDD or LDRAW files. None of those three websites host PDFs.

This is a nice, studless recreation of the studded "Jigsaw" on Philo's website (download the MPD here) :

On his Flickr photoset, BricksOnWheels posted 8 photos and wrote that this is "My first build of 2012, a classic Peterbilt 359. This is a Lego model build in 1:13 scale. I wanted to keep the color scheme simple but efective. I love the dark grey which I started to use last year. I used some new techniques on the chassis and air suspension, and tried to bring the detail to the next level on the engine and drivetrain. Another new detail is the flip bumper on the front, to keep the truck low when the strees are bumpy. The model consist of about 4000 bricks, where some were retrofitted with chrome plating. The wheels are since many years out of Lego production. The ones on this truck have been in my posession since 1984." "December 2011 saw a very nice anniversary competition from Lugnuts, a group of Lego carbuilders. I entered a 32'Hot Rod, and won 2nd price. Within the price package was Mater from the Cars II movie. My daughters build it before I could even look at the box. I thought it was fun to take a picture of it in 'action'. Thanks Lino and Nathan for the nice contest! Here you can read more about it: http://lugnuts-cars.blogspot.com/2012/01/stuff-dreams-are-made-of-roundup.html ."

thirdwigg/ thirdwig posted this -- "My latest model is a modification to the 8081 Lego set. After what Efferman has done by adding a V-8 and reworking the rear suspension, I also gave the model 4 wheel drive, while keeping the functions and look. The model has working steering, four wheel drive [with three differentials], and dual live axles [with Panhard Rods] and seating for four....Model has 6 studs of suspension articulation and steering. Bodywork is unchanged, and I added two rear seats." There are two photos on his Flickr photostream and six on his Brickshelf gallery.

Technicmad (Nathan Thom) has added new features to his Rebrickable website. As reported on his Blog, he wrote: "I have just finished with a number of site improvements: "Using My Parts To See All Set Parts" "I have updated the My Parts page to be a bit more flexible. In addition to changing the grouping/ordering behaviour you can now also choose to display your loose parts and/or your set parts all together. By default it will still display as it always has – only displaying your loose parts, grouped by part type, ordered by part description (which is useful for eg keeping beams in order of size). "If you choose to display both Loose Parts and Set Parts you can view your entire parts collection on one page. "Importing Bricklink Orders" "In your My Parts page, click the “Import Bricklink Orders (XML)” link. For now only the XML format works but I hope to add the other formats later. A section will display where you can browse to your XML file for processing. "When done, it will display how many parts were imported as well as how many Orders were in the file (if there were more than one). If there were any errors they will be displayed. "Sets/Parts Import Error Handling" "When importing sets or parts from external sites, there are often incompatibilities. For example, there are still sets that don’t exist in Rebrickable that do exist on Brickset (e.g. most advent calendar minifigs!). There are also some parts that I have not created in Rebrickable such as Sticker Sheets etc, that might make their way into your Peeron parts export file. Now, when you import your files you will get a list of all sets/parts that could not be processed. It will still import all the other sets/parts in the file. I am also notified of every missing set/part that shows up in these errors so I can now more easily identify what I need to get into the database."

Although it would be challenging, one could have a Lego Mindstorms Competition whereby one builds a Lego Technic Walker and programs it to "dance", like jyouhouya1's Omni Spider does in this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pzOQQzclno

On his Flickr photoset, Barman/ Barman76 posted six photos of his Lego Technic suspension idea for the 8110 Unimog U400 set's "ball joints" -- "Free to use the idea, modify it or improve": Do you think that the 2H2012 Lego Technic 9398 4x4 Rock Crawler set will use something similar to this setup? One can buy the necessary parts from "Lego Direct" (Lego Customer Service), using the guidance in this Eurobricks post.

Mr. Camelor posted this of Han's Lego Technic Articulated Hauler 6x6:

I'm going to wait until Shop.Lego.com offers this 9397 Logging Truck set in the USA. The $150 USD price that Toys-R-Us is charging in the USA is a bit steep, considering that the same set sells at Argos in the UK for ~100 Euros (roughly $132 USD). Toys-R-Us typically has a $10 USD markup on larger Technic sets. Besides, I can earn some VIP points by ordering directly from Lego.com in March. I see that the Toys-R-Us website does not offer the 9397 Logging Truck in Canada (but what else is new about that?)....

It's hard to beat the FUN people can have with Lego Battlebots:

I know that JunkstyleGio will want to add this to his collection! Your model is very close to the real thing:

Here are the instructions on how to "deeplink" your LDD .lxf file from your Brickshelf gallery (so that we may see it now): http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5448&st=0&p=85129&hl=deeplink&fromsearch=1entry85129 .

Thanks Paul & Eric for refining this masterpiece! Your worldwide fans appreciate it!