allanp

Quite a nifty idea. May I suggest that you hone the valves by spinning them using a fast motor and holding them against the "seat". You may also use some cutting compound but be gentle. The goal is not to wear a groove. just to get a nice air tight seal. I assume you will also drill a hole in the side of the engine block near the bottom so the exhaust air can escape when the piston reaches the bottom. You may also want to use some gastet making compound like hylomar blue. Once the pieces are braced together this should allow you to run some fairly high pressure without any air leaks.

Well, if it works......

Well there are single cylinder engines. It's not a problem because most engines spin fast and have flywheels. To get this engine working right will also require massive air consumption. But one advantage you will have over LPE engine is its size. However the LPE engines have tons of power, more than enough to power a vehicle that's to scale to the engine and so are very useful, just not for small models.

Like a real life small engine, if you want to get any usuable power out of it you will need it to go several thousand rpm and add a flywheel. Then you can gear it down many times. For this you will need valves that switch equally as fast very near to the pistons they are switching, like within an inch.

I thought of doing something similar but could not get it to work with 100% lego. For the valves I was going to use pneumatic tubing that is bent almost to the point of kinking. Then it would take very little power to bend the pipe (via cranks and pushrods or whatever) just that bit more to kink the pipe, closing the valve.

Welcome to Eurobricks You could just post the pictures here, then you will have many eyes willing to help.

WOW, this thing spins the PP tyres like they weigh nothing and flys over obsticles. At first I wondered if the video was sped up. The new recievers and servo motor is performing great. TLG should base the differencial on a 36t double bevel gear (with the middle scooped out so it's 1/2M wide) instead of a 28t single bevel.

Well, here you can read the instructions to see if you think it's worth it; http://www.peeron.com/scans/8466-1/ I notice from your set list that you don't have some of the more interesting parts that this set has, like the power puller wheels and CV joints. The Power puller wheels are fairly sought after now and are huge, bigger in diameter that the unimog tyres and much wider. They look ok as monster truck tyres however the hubs are a little too large in diameter to look right for that. The hubs are quite deep tho so this helps to get the steering pivot further into the wheel. For motorised MOCs that use these large, heavy wheels you will have to have lots of torque available at the wheel and strong gear trains. The CV joints can take quite alot of torque tho I would not trust them with wheels this big when in a motorised MOC. They also have alot of friction which tends to slow down motorised MOCs quite noticeably, but for this unmotorised set it's fine. The gearbox is identical to 8448, but as you don't have that set i'll give you my opinion of it. In this set, it works well. However the gear change is crude and not that nice, 8880 has a much better gear change. This transmission is no good for motorised MOCs. It cannot handle much torque, so it makes you want to have all your gearing down after the gearbox. However the high levels of internal friction in the gearbox makes you want to have your gearing down before the gearbox. It's torque threshold is too low, and it's internal friction is too high for an efficient middle ground. Many people including myself have used it in motorised MOCs but i've never been satisfied with it and so have made my own. However in this unmotorised set it does work well (albeit with a crude gear change) as all it does is drive the engine and so has very little stress placed on it. The suspention is very soft. I like fairy soft suspention but this is just too soft so you migth want to use the unimog springs. The gull wing doors incorporate a step which lowers down for people to get in which is nifty, however I don't recall seeing that many vehicles of this type with only two seats and gull wing doors. It does feature a working steering wheel as well as HOG steering which is nice to see and missed in modern sets.

What about a futuristic robot with working arms and hands/claws and head. You could make it so that it can fetch your TV remote for you.

- New crawler with arm for handling wreckage. - New F1 car, but it seems a F3000 for its own size. - New Motocross with new cross tires. - New loader but keep it quiet!

Nice and informative first post, nice one Oh, and welcome to eurobricks

I guess i'm a little surprised that the barcode truck is not getting that much love. I didn't vote for it myself tho because I wanted to vote for my favorites out of those selected. If I voted for all of them then it's not really picking my favorites even tho they are all favorites of mine. So I guess it's because it is up against near perfection in it's competition. If it was in the other poll I think it would have done better.

This is a much harder poll. Like the last one I wanted to vote for as few as possible (I only voted for two in the last one) but this one was very hard to not vote for all but a couple. I managed to get it down to 4 or 5 tho!

Well, it has far better motors (2 buggy motors gives you more power than 4 L-motors or even 3 XL motors!) but oh the simplicity. Add some cool drive trains with some gearing down and you'll have an unstoppable beast!

I hear that. The gearing is impressive and complex but I hate LAs. Luckily there is 8480, also has very impressive gearing (has to control 4 functions from one ungeared motor) and no LAs (plus it's white!).

Do they think i'm gonna buy a crawler just to get one servo motor? £140 for the one part I want is a bit steep. Off to bricklink I go!

I voted for 8455 and 8110 because they have a huge amount of functionality and authenticity. Their functions work great and are quite powerful which makes then feel even more authentic and they are great fun to play with. These are my two favorites from the years listed, but an honerable mention goes to 8421 for it's overall impressiveness and inclusion of RC buggy motor and pneumatics. The only things that let it down for me is the manual boom rotation and pneumatic pump. Would have been great to see those functions also motorised with a second driving ring.

Ah ha! Thanks for the info

This is awesome, makes me wanna build something similar except with two buggy motors under the hood

8880 is best, Done!

Now that's an album cover right there!

Well if you want ideas for another challenge, here's a thought or twenty, don't use any panels! Why, personally I think they are ugly on a supercar model (no offence!). It's just that, the second most important feature of a supercar (the first being how it goes with it's transmission and so on) is it looks. If a supercar does not look like a supercar, then it's not a supercar. So what makes a car look good? Is it covering every square millimeter with a panel? NO! It's the lines, the curves my friend! Your eyes must be drawn to them and not be distracted by a patchwork of panels that fail to cover up everything. To this day I maintain that 8880 is the best looking thing i've ever seen made from Lego, cos it has those lines and nothing to distract your eye from those lines. But of course 8880 can be improved upon. There was too much ground clearence and the designers only had straight beams to create the illusion of curved lines, but now with flexible axles and a much lower ride height a much better looking car can be made. Now i'm not saying that it's easier to make a car look good without panels, it's harder, so I understand the temptation to use them. But whilst ditching the panels is harder, there is more potential. Like how an f1 car is much harder to drive than a ford mondeo, it's harder but there's more potential for speed! The designers of 8880 pulled off a few miracles. With straight studded beams they created the illusion of sculped, curved lines. With a few thin black lines they transformed a mostly grey chassis into a black supercar. So how about building a new 8880? Not a direct studless remake, but a totally new, sleeker, smoother, more streamlined and faster looking 8880. Make it big like the R8, keep it black with the yellow stripe and a white, gorgeous looking interior. Don't allow the gearbox to consume the entire chassis, keep it compact like a real car. And make it look proffesional by the mid 90's standards, not like the MOCish looking sets of today, don't allow anything that looks like it's there just to fill a gap and keep the lines as smooth, crisp and uninterupted as possible. Anything else I can think of to make it harder? Oh, do something new, like electric power steering. Yup, that should keep you busy for a while

He must have been pretty tyred of it! (EDIT: I know it's not a tyre, but the phase "he must have been pretty earphoneproctectored of it didn't sound as funny!)

..... ..... ..... ..... But yeah, nice bike!