allanp

Well, diving the total value of sets (via peeron) by the amount of years i've been building technic (since 1991) I get around £300 per year on average! There are also bricklink orders on top of that, but as far as hobbies go, Lego is mentally VERY healthy, enjoyable and comparatively cheap compared to most other hobbies. And every penny spent on it I still own in Lego form in, despite being well used, like new condition.

No matter how great the band, no matter how talented they are, you can bet they have made more than one stinker of a song. So it's no surprise that even Lego with all it's talented designers have some pretty bad sets in their portfolio. For me their worse technic set ever is the 8264 hauler. Yeah, it has some of those wheels and panels in yellow which is cool, and it gave us some, at the time, rare new parts. However in the entire £50 set you got 1 gear (minus the turntable). The entire motorised lifting mechanism was pre built in two halves, you just had to join them with a few pins and a bracket. In the first half you had the motor with internal gearing pre built for you, the second half was a linear actuator which converts a relatively fast rotary motion into a slow linear motion in one pre built part. If it was an authentic mechanism then all that would be forgiven, even praised for they way it authenticly recreates the simplicity of the real life mechanism, but this is far from authentic, in real life you need the rotary motion, rams, valves, a network of tubing, etc. This set is the embodiment of all that I hate about both LAs and having so much internal gearing done for you inside the motor and for me, this rmakes it far too simple and far too inauthentic and therefore unworthy of the name technic.

Ah, I did not know that. I know that the angle is pretty limited for the cv part tho, which is a shame. I'll have to play around with them being driven by a cv joint at an angle. At worse i'll have to limit the steering to very acute angles. Oh yes, things can always be designed better, which is why your comments are important to TLG. As for the three pins, the part is the same as the unimog, did you notice this effect of the loose pins on the unimog or is it only now you have tried driving them with the CV joint? And yes, the old black bubs had little friction in their housings, I was talking about the CV joint itself having alot of friction in the old hub, but I see your point, the hub part itself didn't have much friction and also not much play. So yeah, the new hub parts could have been better but I still say they are a big improvement on the old. I guess it all depends on what you prefere, stability or low running friction, even tho we could have had both. I did complain about the motorised hood! Dampers are very realistic in fact, way more so than mLAs, if you have a hatch back car you will see dampers used to take most of the weight when you open the back. What is unrealistic is that in real life they are delibrately not strong enough to lift whatever they are attached to, they are tuned to the weight so it feels light as a feather.

WOW, that's pretty outstanding and an substancial improvement.

I would say a transmission is a more important function to an F1 car so, but the suspention of 8880B is not authentic like 46000, so I guess they are even. And I also prefere the way the hood opens on the silver champion, however, I too do not get the negativity towards this set. Silver chapion was a flagship and more expensive but on the whole I prefere 46000 due to the new hub parts, which I think are excellent. Yes, they are a bit of a loose fit, but that's the price you pay for low friction which to me is more important and the looseness isn't noticeable when "driving" it around. And £80 for well over 1000 parts (lots of white parts no less) is not that bad I guess, I didn't hesitate to pay it anyway! And the reason why I prefere stickers to printed parts is because you can leave them off if you want to.

This is a hard one. Hmmmm. The t-rex from 8485 is awesome, and the submarine from 8480 is also pretty epic. I would say those are the best, with 8880 and 8868 having the second best. I would not say the 8880 b-model is more featured than others such as the silver champion or 46000 because they have more authentic suspention. However their lack of a gearbox does not make them any more featured either (secondary features like lifting bodies and teeny tiny moving flap at the back aside!), so they are about the same in that respect, tho 46000 is still my favorite. That reminds me, the b-model of the silver champion is also pretty good. That also had a working steering wheel (the whole steering mechanism is made in a quite interesting way), so far only the second truck to ever have one as far as I can remember, the barcode truck being the first.

Welcome to Eurobricks, this is great for a first MOC, probably the best i've seen. The colours are great and you've got the angles perfect. Keep building man!

I've had 2 micro motors fail, fixed one of them my dropping it! Pneumatic tubing is not a problem, they all fit. There are some cases there the old and new cylinders are not interchangerble with slight modification (due to the bottom end ofm the old one sometimes being used for stability), but it should be an easy fit and those cases are quite rare anyway so I wouldn't let that but you off, the newer ones seems to be better anyway. Valves on the other hand may be more tricky both to interchange and to get hold of the old one. Thankfully my old valves all seem to be working still, so they may not be a problem either.

Glad we could help

"power output: 5.71 Watts" NIIIIIICE!

Nice work so far, do you have any specs on the new internal motor you are using?

Flagship back hoe (4wd, planetary wheel hub reduction (one of the few areas not really covered by technic barring turn tables), tilting and steering front axle, motorised multipump compressor, all the pneumatic functions of 8455 + rear arm sliding side to side, telescopic arm section and opening front bucket) Forklift truck (Full function RC, pneumatic) A skip truck would also be cool, with front and rear live axle and leaf spring suspention (another area not really covered by technic barring illegal techniques). All these ideas of course all with longer pneumatics and on board compressors

My guess is that you need to pay attention to the placement of the axle in the picture below. Axle "A" is in the middle hole of the beam and also note that hole "B" is empty.

They will never be close to being as good as the buggy motor. You can increase the speed but you lose torque leaving you with (if you do it well) the exact same total power output as you had before, which is about half that of the buggy motor. Still I much prefer it having no internal gearing, constructing the mechanics yourself with your own external gearing is what technic should be about.

Awesome review for an awesome set! There's so much to love, the way they used rigid hose for the straight sections and flexible hoses for the bendy sections (as in real life), the way everything is controlled from levers at a single point and not from a knob right next to the function (as in real life), the way all of the tubing (ok, except for the ones connecting the pump tp the valves) are all very dark grey (as in real life), the way every function of the crane arm is powered by a single motor/pump (as in real life), even the way the engine turns quite fast relative to the wheels (as in real life). Along with the unimog there are no other sets released to date as authentic as this. On top of that it's a joy to "operate". I say operate rather than play with because the pneumatics, even the sound of the compressor (kinds sounds like a truck engine!) was so darned life like in this set to me as a kid that it's like operating the real thing, that's what I found so cool about this set as a kid, cooler than any other toy or computer game or anything. Those were just toys and games, but 8868 just felt like having the real thing.

Here we go again! *takes a deep breath* UNIMOG unimog unimog unimog unimog unimog unimog unimog unimog unimog 8110 FTW 8110 FTW 8110 FTW 8110 FTE UNIMOG unimog unimog unimog *inhales* UNIMOG UNIMOG unimog unimog unimog.............

As blakbird said, my RC version works fine, the wheel wobble issue really isn't an issue for it. Maybe it would be for small models but i'de rather they have very low friction than be like 8880's very stable design which has alot of friction. My only dissapointment with the front one is that it does not have ackerman steering geometry (like 8880 has), but with the rear ones you can make all kinds of crazy geometries.

Doh! you are boxerlego, silly me haha!

Nope, by boxerlegos cool looking method you get a 1:5* ratio. I glued all the gears together and removed the outer drive gear, the gear ratio is now 1:1. I haven't done any proper testing but I can say it is definitely faster than the old ungeared 9v motor which spins at roughly 4200 rpm by quite alot. *BTW, do you know that when you are working out the gear ratio of a planetary gear system such as this, you have to divide the number of teeth on the outer ring gear by the number of teeth on the inner sun gear (looks to equal about 5) and then add 1. This means that each stage actually has a 6:1 ratio, resulting in a final reduction of 36:1. Which means if the output is spinning at 200 rpm, the input is spinning at 7200 rpm. I would say my modified motor is about that!

You want something you never give yourself? Evidence? Ok. "I'm tired of motors taking all the fun out of a set. It's my opinion, not law." Yes, that is only his opinion, I can see that is not senseless whining and bitching, it's just his opinion which he is welcome to have and to share and I respect that. So why is it that when someone else has an opinion it's just complaining for no apparent reason? Is it because those opinions clash with his own or what? Seems a bit hypocritical to me to start up an entire thread to complain that "so many people on this forum complain" and his solution that he highlighted in bold misses my next point. When I make suggestions, for example "they should make longer pneumatics" and "they should make different sized synchromesh gears" and then go on to explain why, that is not me complaining that they didn't do those things, it's me saying I like the product but here's what I would do to make it worth my money. They can take it or leave it, not gonna cry other it and i'm sure neither are they. The above post is a little condescending as it assumes that those who share such views are just bitching, missing the point of what Lego is about and then laughs at them for it, despite him missing the point I made above, along with missing the point that some modifications that I would really like are not achieveable by me, such as producing the parts I mentioned above to TLGs standards. High drama whining? Context please. Again this post is a little condescending as it assumes that those who like to share their views on how TLG could further improve their product have no idea that they can build their own MOCs or modify one of TLGs design to their own taste. It also implies that they are uncreative, unimaginative and generally quite miserable, despite the fact that being able to think of ways to impove upon something that is already quite good is evidence of the opposite of that. And like you said, there is the topic you started, two topics within a short period of time started to complain about people who complain. Maybe two topics alone are not quite a trend but it certainly feels like one.

Nobody is saying that. What i'm saying is that with instructions being so overly simplified and having 1:1 diagrams to show the length of every beam and axle the designers should be allowed to make more aesthetically pleasing colour choices. This is an example of a constructive critism that need not be taken offensively by anyone. Just lately there seems to be a trend of bitching and whining about any opinion that's anything other than "wow, everything they do is perfect". I love technic but nothing is perfect, everything can be made to be even better than it already is. Progress and continual improvement does NOT come from sitting around saying everything is just dandy which makes constructive critisisms a valuble asset to TLG. If somebody is going on a date and has bad breath, a polite stranger won't say anything, but a friend will tell them.

I think LAs are bad enough even with a motor, even worse without. Well, you did ask

And exactly how am I supposed to change the size of a clutch gear or have different coloured 5x7 and 5x11 frames in a purist way .

I don't have any technical data on the motor but I have messed with it to make it faster. I basically removed the outer ring gear and glued up all the remaining gears, effectively removing all the internal gearing down whilst retaining the look and the orange axle hole. Whilst it looks identical (aside from some scratches obtained from taking it apart), as you can imagine it now spins very fast, faster than the old 9v ungeared motor and still has more torque than that motor to. Enough speed to spin some tyres of it's wheels due to centrifugal force causing the tyre to expand. It's overall mechanical power output remains about the same as before, more speed, less torque. It's now much more useful. I can motorise anything that requires the power of an XL motor with it with the added benefit of being able to protect gear trains using clutch gears (previously useless with an XL motor) or even a belt drive, which is alot quiter than the standard XL motor. It drives engines at very high speeds like you would get in real life (they even begin to sound real at that speed) and there's the added joy of building all the needed gear trains and gets rid of the kind of boring over simplification as seen sets like the bulldozer whose gear trains were far to mechanicly simple for my taste. Now i've just got to convice my purist self to use the darned thing

"colour vomit" is a great way to describe it. I know why they do it, but i'm not convinced it's needed when you have 3 parts per step and a little 1:1 diagram to show you the right size beam or axle. If they want to differenciate different colours for pins and axles that's fine, but it would be far better to colour these parts to suit the model. In this case 2l pins could be black and 3l pins could be white. Also those 5x7 frames would have been better in white. The colour of the crank pieces now makes me think the head gasket has gone (your oil and water mix and goes a tan colour). Different coloured gears is also unnecesary IMHO. It's a great set but every single set released in the past many years would have looked alot better and cooler to TLGs target demographic had the colours been done right.