allanp

Real hydraulics will sag as well depending on the age of the equipment.

Besides being big enough to transport 1:8 scale cars, what other reason or functions could it have to justify such a huge set and likely highest ever price tag? I'm thinking: 1) New truck wheels with a very deep offset like real truck wheels, where you can directly bolt/pin two if them back to back and still have a small gap between the tyres. 2) Maybe realistic leaf springs (thin spring steel strips with over moulded plastic end pieces perhaps) supplemented with air suspension that automatically adjusts the pressure to keep the suspension feeling right no matter if there's no cars loaded or if it's full of cars. There could also be a new steering hub using the roller elements inside the hubs of the moon rover, but without the ball joints and with a longer steering arm for more mechanical advantage to help steering. Like how they introduced parts for 1:5 scale motorbikes, the parts needed for 1) and 2) would be great for a large number of future large scale trucks, and there's so many more different truck type vehicles they could make than there are different superbikes. 3) Personally I think it really should be motorised, maybe not full RC unless it has a BIG physical remote with lots of controls. The motors should not struggle to lift any ramps loaded with 1:8 cars into place with good batteries, and of course it should mimic how real ones work (so no linear actuators!) 4) Realistic tie down straps, to safely tie down and secure the wheels (you know, for a greater sense of immersion during play time.....I mean operation!) These would use new fabric strap pieces which might sound too specialised however, they could also be used as lifting straps in future crane models, and also as working seat belts in future 1:8 cars. Maybe the original comment about a 1:8 scale car transporter was only joking, but I mean, with how popular the 1:8 scale cars are, then why not? If it was designed with the mindset of "let's not just make it big for the sake of it, but because it's functions and mechanical authenticity justify it's immense size and price" then I'd be all for it.

Watching this made me think of this thread. Imagine a fully RC PNEUMATIC recovery truck like this one, with new more powerful motors/compressor and a new electronics system which includes a control center 3 that looks quite like the actual real controls handed to Guy at about 2:56 in the video.

I think PU has a part to play in all this. To have truly great "models that move" you need a good eco system of electronics to power them and sadly, while PU was impressive in it's own way, it wasn't at all right for Technic. It's very telling to me that in all the technic YouTube content I watch, I hardly ever see them use PU hardware. I'm sure there's some, but they mostly use Buwizz, 9v, PF, mindstorms or some other third party electronics. On the subject of cars, cars and more cars, yes I'm sure they sell well, but I wonder how sustainable that'll be in the long term. Surely so many cars will saturate the market pretty quickly right? And if we look to brickset to see how many Technic sets are owned, the top sellers are the big 1:8 scale cars with the complex gearboxes (not the flood of 1:10 and smaller scale cars we're getting), and of course the mighty Arocs is right up there standing proudly among this group of all time top selling cars! And then if we look at Amazon (well, Amazon UK for me) for Lego technic and look for the best sellers in the past month, it appears as though most of the cars are being outsold by the Artemis rocket, and to a lesser extent but still outselling most cars is the 42198 bush plane. The Mack LR garbage truck and the 42179 Earth and Moon seem to still be keeping pace with a lot of the cars that were released more recently. I know TLG have far more complete sales figures than my meager attempt to find some useful intel, but that's the trend I'm seeing. It is reassuring to read that Technic is still among the top 5 highest selling themes, but that's pretty much always been the case as far as I know, long before we had nothing but cars. So I ask you, is it still a top selling theme because of all the cars or is it despite all the cars, and they're just resting on the Technic brand like a bad (yet somehow still profitable) movie remake. This summers Unimog appears to be a glimmer of hope, a tiny sparkle of light in the darkness, but I still yern to be blinded by a dazzling spectacle. I gladly accept this small crumb from their table with much appreciation, but still my tummy rumbles while waiting for a magnificent feast. EDIT: Just for those that might have missed it, this years Unimog is obviously more than just a small crumb, it appears to be a great mid sized set and I'm really looking forward to it. I was referring to something more....flagship.

Looking good Grum, definitely getting some old school model team vibes. One difference I notice though is that modern models all seem to be entirely built from subassemblies where as old school models predominantly had you add pieces directly to the model.

Big congratulations @grohl!

Do both your 5.5 and 6L pumps generate pressure? A good pump should make over 60psi from my experience.

They should be about the same I think. Are all your 6L pumps the same?

Looking forward to this one Grum. It's definitely a spiritual form of model team.

Well, I didn't know that!

How's this for an unpopular opinion. 2026 can still turn out to be a great year IF the remaining unknown 3 models are great. That's all it really takes, just 3 great models. But at only three, they would have to be really good to call the whole year great. Nothing in the past couple years has reached that benchmark. The SLS rocket is good and the 1:5 Ducati is very good, but it's no improvement on the previous 1:5 scale Yamaha (actually it's worse due to the cam style engine, it's redeemed only by a sweet gearbox). They need to up their game if they want to rescue 2026. I STILL have hope.

You can imagine a million bugs will be inside the combine after a successful harvest

The only problem I have with this set is the whole control+/pu side of things (needing a smart device, no included physical remote and all that). But for the crane itself I agree with you. Unlike the majority of RC Technic sets, this is one of the very few RC sets that retains any semblance of mechanical realism, which I think is why it still works! The issues with other sets you mentioned come from gearboxes that are far more complex in their basic mechanical layout than their real life counterparts. To make the crane more mechanically authentic would have required hydraulics and hydraulic motors for all of the drives which isn't likely to happen in Lego. This set shows that it's possible to be both RC and authentic (as authenticity is never just about the looks in literally every other context of the word authentic!) I also agree that the build experience was great. In other themes that are not Technic, having such large pieces (like the many 3x19 frames and large truss pieces) would be seen as a negative. But even as a huge lifelong fan of (what) Technic (should be), I've never felt endless beam stacking and placing half a thousand pins to be as satisfying as placing bricks. It's the mechanisms that are fun to build, not so much their surrounding structures and definitely not bodywork (probably why cars aren't so much fun to build). It's easy to imagine having to build all those trusses from regular technic beams, and how tedious that would be. So I think the large amount of what some might call j u n i o r i s e d pieces can actually be a good thing in Technic, so long as it's not the mechanisms that are being j u n i o r i s e d. This crane is a great example of that. Yes, it is expensive, especially for something that doesn't even include a physical remote. But as I said, I think all of the negatives of this set are rooted in the design philosophy of control+/powered up. Had this set came with a large programmable control centre 3 style physical remote then the price would have been easier to understand, even if it was higher. The RRP is not the RRP anymore so getting such a thing at the correctly discounted price would be much more appealing. Personally I think such a thing would have also looked way cooler on the box for the kids than saying you can use it with a smart phone, something that really isn't available to EVERY child and doesn't hold much novelty for the kids that do have them. So yeah, the crane itself is great. I guess time will tell if all those fancy electronics will still be usable without any workarounds in ten or twenty years.

I'm not sure how useful this comment is, but reading this topic reminded me of how air is itself used as a sort of lubricant in some applications. I'm thinking of grinding machine spindles that run on a cussion of air to prevent metal on metal contact. The precision required to use air as a lubricant in this manner is much higher than is possible in Lego. However, doesn't a hovercraft work the same way? With enough air flow and the proper design, the mating surfaces can be as imprecise as a rubber skirt on a grass field. I wonder if a flow of air could be allowed to pass from the high (atmospheric) pressure side of the piston through channels that exit through ports on the side walls of the piston itself, creating a cussion of air between the piston and the bore in which it slides. It could be true that the small bypass air around the piston is already at atmospheric pressure and thus no air flow will come from the jets. However, when air is forced to speed up through a small opening (such as air that is forced to blow by the piston), its pressure actually drops. The smaller the opening, the greater the pressure drops (Bernoulli's principal), and so I imagine the piston gets sucked towards the side walls increasing friction. So (in my head anyway!) maybe allowing a small cussion of air to exist via ports on the sides of the piston would not only act as a lubricant but also help prevent a drop in pressure that can suck the piston against the side walls? All this is purely speculation. I'll leave you the fun of testing it

Big congratulations on your 30th official release. I must admit however, and I hate to be "that guy", but the "correct firing order" comment is puzzling. There are of course no spark plugs and nothing to fire. I believe the correct firing order would be shown as the red blinking dots in this video: So we will assume that it actually refers to the layout of the crank/pistons. However the Lego Rexy appears to have a 180 degree V6 with a flat plane cam/crank. However I believe the real Porsche uses a boxer arrangement (opposite pistons move opposite, 6 pistons on 6 crank journals) with 120 degree offsets like as shown in the above video. I must also admit that the displacement of the older style regular pistons is much closer to a 1:10 (edit: or 1:12) scale than the newer cam style pistons which are too small. Having whined about the engine I want to leave with something nice. The outside of the car definitely looks like the real thing. I appreciate the use of fewer larger panels because building bodywork isn't as fun to me as building working mechanisms, so the larger panels get it done faster and with a cleaner look.