allanp

I must admit I wasn't a huge fan of the barcode truck when it was first released but now I have come to appreciate it more with with it's cool gear trains, despite having no worm gears it had huge ratios, 243:1 in one model, and of course it's excellent use of the flex system.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet! Time to sit back and chill with lots of reading. Thank you Blakbird :thumbup:

Really needs a first person view and mouse/keyboard friendly controls like minecraft. Other than that it's a great start. I'de love to see Technic added in the future with physics.

I have it and by today's standards it's not that great but as a kid at the time of release I thought it was great. It gave you animated instructions, some of which can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/31414348 There were 5 areas or "rooms" you could visit on the CD-rom, all fairly impressively and artfully rendered for the time. Rooms A and B are the building instructions for the A (submarine) and B (mobile base) models. You can step through the building instructions manually as you build or play the complete animation. Room C is the tips and tricks room which contained building instructions for 5 smaller models. Each model contains at least one handy building tip. With a total of 7 models to build I guess the CD-rom version was a submariner themed universal set. room D is the briefing room. This is where you get educational background info about all the models in the set and underwater life in general. Room E is the showroom. This room has many screens containing info about many other Technic sets. Some screens played TV ads released from previous years including the TV ads for 8880, control centre 2 and the space shuttle. In all of the rooms there is an animated technic figure (the one included in the set) that would pop up from time to time to give hints and stuff. In room E for example he would sometimes pop up and say "what ever you do, don't look at screen 8.9" or something like that. I'm going mostly off memory here. Clicking on that screen would show a wooden duck toy produced by Lego before they went to plastic bricks. I do have the CD somewhere but I can't find it, but I did find the CD-rom for 8428. I hope not, I've just done the same thing as you was writing your comment

I do not envy that choice . One thing to consider MIGHT be that the longer cylinders will probably not be compatible with the cylinder brackets and might also make them obsolete. This might make the cylinder brackets become not so highly prized in a few months time when we can get those longer cylinders instead.

I think the crawler crane will be reviewed about mid July/early August. That's usually when we get to see the reviews for 2H sets. Am I right in thinking the Arocs has a slightly later that usual release this year? We still don't have an officially released picture of the finalised version of it. I don't mind if they are taking a little extra time to get this set just as good as they can make it.

Good concept. Will you be putting a hole in the top face of the upper piece so the 2M axles and rollers can be removed?

Well personally, and this is just my opinion, I don't consider a set to be a Technic set just because it is made of Technic parts. To me, Technic is defined by mechanical complexity, authenticity and challenging building, all relative to their size and price point. Neither of these sets exhibit any of those traits. They are not complex, authentic or challenging in relation to their size and price. When looking at what makes something Technic, I don't think you can include the connection system in the definition because before stud-less, Technic sets were studded with the majority of part connections being done via studs. Take 8480 for example, or any pre stud-less sets, and I think you'll find that there are many more studs pressed into parts then there are axles/pins. So to me, it's not the parts or the way it is built which defines a set as being Technic as that would exclude every pre stud-less Technic set, it's those three traits which these sets do not have. But then again I suppose Technic is what ever TLG decide is Technic.

Yeah but they are small and cheap sets.

I would say that a Technic set, among other things, has to include some form of mechanical function that you have to build yourself. This is not the case with these two sets as they are all pre built assemblies pinned together with some Technic parts on top for a body so to me they really don't feel like Technic.

Yeah, if I HAD to get rid of 8421 to get 42043 I'd do it but do you not have another set to sell? 8421 is a good set.

Writing about the years and parts is fantastic as it lets you clearly see how Technic evolves and changes over the years and the new parts are very interesting. Whenever a new picture surfaces of a new model I always look for what new parts it might have first.

WOW! That is a lot of work. seriously good job

Hahahahahahaha superb. All hail our hamster overlord!

It has some interesting parts like the red pistons as mentioned, rubber tracks, 6 sprockets for those tracks in yellow, the nifty steering parts and a very long flex tube in yellow. The set itself has an engine driven by the rubber tracks and the tracks have sprung suspension (I think those functions are both unique to this set but I could be wrong) and HOG steering. I thinks it's also the only half track Lego released. So it's quite a unique set but I don't really like it that much. It's OK, if you can find it for a good price then the parts may be useful but as for the model itself it's not a model of anything I recognise in real life. It's called a mountain rambler but a more accurate name would be weird half track thingy.

Yup, definitely fix it. I don't think it's the hoses, I've never had one leak. Try submerging your cylinders and valves in water to see if any are leaking any bubbles of air. They'll be fine so long as you dry them quickly and thoroughly.

This truck is just gorgeous :wub:

I think 8480 works out to roughly 70:1 scale.

You could cover the studs with 1x1 tiles and those little 1x1 slope pieces to make it more rounded and it hides the studs so it'll look a bit more like the surrounding studless.

Might be a spare. They always throw in a few extra parts like pins and bushes. Or maybe it's used in the b-model.

They're both good. Hmmmmm. Maybe a more refined studded using some cheese slops and tiles to smooth the shape.

Whilst I really complain about this set I think that Technic wheels and tyres in general are all wrong. Basically they are all too wide with respect to their diameter (the should be thinner to be in scale), the hubs are too small in diameter in relation to the diameter of the tyre and the hubs aren't deep enough. Compare a lego truck tyre cross section to that of a real truck tyre and you'll see they are completely different. Looking at these wheels you can see that they are much thinner and the hubs are so deep that on the front they protrude slightly past the tyre wall which is very good for moving the steering pivot inwards (less strain on steering and less prone for wheels to bend upwards under weight) as well as making it much easier to gang two wheels together.

8110 is awesome.

The v2 receiver seems quite capable of powering an RC motor. Time for lego to release a pf buggy motor! I would think a motor with less internal gearing (like only one planetary stage, or better yet no gearing at all) would be cheaper to make anyway as it has less parts.

Seems odd that they would cost so much to produce. It was a single revolving red light in a fancy lego brick. Was it that the set itself wasn't very good so they didn't make enough of them for the effects of mass production to bring the cost down? But then they was also in the space shuttle, which was a great set for it's day.