allanp

I've been waiting for @kbalage's review to make my mind up, and overall I LOVE IT! To get the bad stuff out the way.... 1) Colours everywhere! They gave us the perfect solution for colour "coding" with the dual molded 9 position selector wheel. Have a colour coded inside hub and have the outside a more authentic shade to look like metal gears and rotary cams. I'm not the only one in the wider Lego community that will not stop talking about all these colours and blue pins and yellow axles etc, so there it is! And now they tease us with this dual molded piece. Do more of that, only, have the colour coded piece in the middle be smaller. 2) The steering. The steering wheel and paddle shifters are still completely level, and that whole area is still too bulky. Ideally I want to see the steering wheel and shifter paddles tilted upwards a little to face the driver and have the bulky indexing mechanism moved elsewhere (like inside the gearbox perhaps). I still want the paddles behind the steering wheel, just move the indexing mechanism away from where the drivers legs should be. Doing this they could also make that area of the interior look much better, instead of opening the drivers door only to have your eyes drawn to a colour coded mess of indexing mechanics. That could all be moved elsewhere and have that area look much nicer and cleaner (same goes for the DNR gearbox, but a bit more on that later). There also doesn't appear to be any ackermann geometry and no HOG (one of the few not very realistic things I like in Technic). But at least access to the steering wheel itself seems to be better. Now the good stuff. 1) New gears! With the addition of the 8t and 18t clutch gears we now have a total of 6 sizes. And it's great to see a size that's a non multiple of 4t. What sizes are left now? 14t and 22t clutch gears, with 18t and 10t spur gears? Those 4 gears are literally all that's left to make a two shaft 7 speed gearbox with even 2t jumps between gears. With the addition of the 8t clutch gear as well, we can currently make a 2 shaft 6 speed with a mix of 2t and 4t jumps between gears, with all the clutch gears neatly arranged on one shaft. Excellent! 2) The gearbox's layout is mostly authentic, with a few exceptions. This image shows a koenigsegg lightspeed gearbox. The gearbox found in 42232 is remarkably similar in it's layout and is therefore much more mechanically efficient and (most importantly for me) more mechanically authentic than it's predecessors. I must always praise Lego for bringing out new parts for the purpose of increasing mechanical authenticity. But there are some slight differences. In the above image you can see 7 clutches. The green clutch on the far left on the bottom shaft is the reverse gear clutch and basically bypasses the middle shaft and couples the input and output shaft together, causing a reversal of direction. This is contained in the gearbox itself, and neutral simply deselects all clutches. The Lego version however, like the previous 1:8 cars, has a separate DNR gearbox between the seats, which is a slight increase in gear count and inefficiency/complexity over the real one. To make Legos gearbox work like the real one, you'd need to be able to deselect all 6 clutches in the main gearbox, however the selector drums aren't setup that way. Another deviation is where the engine is connected to. In the image above, look at the middle row with 4th, 5th and 6th gears and note the second clutch gear from the right on the middle shaft, the one with the yellow clutch activated. The engine in 42232 appears to be connected to that gear as opposed to the actual input shaft. I know that gear is always coupled to another gear on the input shaft anyway, so functionally this routing makes no real difference, but it is a slight change from reality. And finally, The middle shaft in the above image is split in 2 in the Lego version (likely to make room for the differential). The split middle shaft is connected together via an extra shaft, the one that sits beside the differential with a 20t gear on each end. Now this sounds like a lot of deviation from reality, and I guess it kind of is. But the main essence of the gearbox is there in a way that is much more authentic than previous versions. So while there's always room for improvement, the gearbox of 42232 is very much improved! The lightspeed gearbox is there, it's recognizable, it's efficient (mostly), and is a far cry from the spaghetti mess of previous 1:8 gearboxes. This is why Lego 1:8 cars are now ahead of the competition in my opinion. It's the details. 3) There's a gear position indicator. YAY! 4) The suspension and it's new specialized parts. Unlike some people, I like specialized parts. Whilst I can admire the creativity needed to realize new functionality from existing Lego parts, the fact is that's not how real life things that are at the cutting edge of performance (like koenigsegg sadairs spear) are made. They use a lot of bespoke custom parts, so Lego introducing the same parts just adds more to it's authenticity. It makes the set feel more, out of reach (in a good way), more....special. I see these shiny new parts and I see that I can't just build the set exactly how it is from my own parts collection, which makes me want to buy it. So yeah, I didn't want to love it and I didn't want to feel this desire to spend another 400 smackeroos on another Technic car but here we are! There is still room for improvement but 42232 is a solid upgrade from the P1, which I felt was also a solid upgrade from the Ferrari. This is good and gives me hope that someone in the Technic team is still listening to the fans. Thank you TLG!

Another YAY for this one!

Be careful what you wish for. An evil wish master might say "A modernised version of the space shuttle you say? Right then, let's have a bunch of bright red, blue and yellow visible, let's not have a micro motor, let's not have intricate and varied gear reductions and belt drives, and let's make it a car! You did ask for modernised right?"

It's hard to say, TLG are so secretive. Things go away for a while and then come back years later, others go away and never return (like the flex system sadly). My general feeling (speculation) is that, at minimum, PU is being reworked to better meet fan expectations, but probably more likely it has been canned entirely, and if they're starting over totally from scratch then it'll take a few years before we see it. But I think there will be.... something. Technic, among other things, is meant to be "Lego that moves". Motorisation is too important to leave off the table entirely. The question of RC is a bit more complicated. On the one hand, it does increase playability (if there's a physical remote). On the other hand, it increases costs and has mostly been used as a replacement to the mechanics that Technic was so prized for, rather than an addition, which to my mind removes the justification for the extra cost. Being a replacement also invites comparisons to other RC products that have far better performance for less money. I feel these comparisons wouldn't be made so much if the main focus was kept on the mechanics, where Technic has the potential to be impossible to beat. The current RC system is also app dependant which pulls it further away from feeling like a genuine Lego, screen time free experience. In my opinion those issues aren't inherent to RC in general, only to TLGs chosen implementation of it. RC can be a great addition to an already great Technic set and there's solutions to all of the issues mentioned above. RC can and likely will return to larger Technic sets but probably not in the form of an app controlled smart battery box, and almost certainly not in 2026.

YAY! Loved this retrospective of a legend.

Me too! I was going to post this exact thing

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.