allanp

Yeah, that gearbox hasn't given me one single gear teeth click in any MOC for 11 years since I first used it in Blue falcon The gear ratios are: R = 3.472:1 1 = 2.778:1 2 = 2.083:1 3 = 1.667:1 4 = 1.250:1 5 = 1.000:1 Which gives a nice and realistic, smoothish curve with the distance between gear ratios getting consistantly smaller as you move up through the gears. The gearbox in 8448/8466 on the other hand has ratios of.... R = 2.501:1 1 = 1.667:1 2 = 1.500:1 3 = 1.000:1 4 = 0.900:1 5 = 0.600:1 ....which produces a very wobbly curve with the biggest ratio difference (ignoring reverse) happening between 2nd and 3rd with the smallest difference happening between 3rd and 4th. This gearbox is also prone to gears slipping due to some gears not being placed as close together as they should be.

Well, if it's worth stating it's worth over stating What next? Hmmm, let me think (Labour party, Tory party, Atheists, Libral democrats, Feminists, Anti tobacco control freaks and the whole nanny state, The media, Hollywood, Simon Cowell, M*ga Bl*cks,..........................) I'm probably best sticking to Lego on this site

I'll av it done for Christmas dinner!

Don't be a tool! Ever wonder why fewer and fewer people actually care about deforestation? Look, in the past there have been concerns about depleating rain forests but things are better now. There are sustainable forests that are grown to be cut down for paper. If we didn't need them for paper these forests would not exist. In America there are now more trees than there were 100 years ago just because of this, and that's a fact. And now that we have these forests, the natural rain forests can be harvested at a much more sustainable rate. Because of this there is also no longer any need to even recycle paper. This is because recycling takes alot of transport lorries and chemicals that are all more harmful to the environment than starting from scratch. On top of that the quality of recycled paper is crap. And on top of all of that, do you really think that producing a computer (with all of it's plastics and so on) and then using our planets resources to make electricity to run the darned thing is better for the environment than growing a tree from sctratch (during it's life will breath in CO2 and breath out O2) and making paper out of it? Give me a break!

That's epic LOL! And i'm sure James May was wearing the same shirt when I helped him build his lego house LOL!

Here's a selection I made. I find the 4 speed and 5 speed + R to be alot stronger than what you find in 8880 and 8448/8466. The transpher cases are good for added functionality and complexity in 4WD/AWD MOCs. Hope this helps.

These are my favotite, although in this case probably more for nostalgia than anything.

Not everybody has (or wants) a tablet PC or even a laptop. As long as they keep making the printed instruction come with the set they can do what ever addition formats they want as far as i'm concerned.

I don't like building from a computer at all, even from normal instructions let alone a video that you have to keep pausing. I have not built a single B model that does not have paper instructions.

I think that many real life vehicles of this type may only have one driven axle. The reason for having two is to carry more weight.

If you want looks, the get the F1 car, but if you want functionality and good parts, get the off roader.

I like seeing engines run this fast as it is more realistic and sounds great too (stupid PF motors with their stupid down gearing, grrr!). However I would not say that it's running at 6000 RPM as the motors are slowed down alot due to the load placed on them turning the engine so fast.

That's a neat looking way of getting both telescopic and lifting functionality. Do you think the cylinder would be better central to the gear rack to prevent it twisting?

I think that when I see comments like Anio's "bad joke" comment, I agree that it is kinda insulting to the designers that we all know read these blogs, it can't be nice for them to read comments like that. BUT, I am hardley one to judge, I know I have written some things that should have been worded better. I guess it's just because we all owe technic a great hobby (personally I feel I owe it much more than that) so to be a technic designer is more than a Job, to be able to, shall we say, steer the good ship technic into a brighter future is a privaledge we would all love to have and I admit, when I see the first pictures of new models to come out, and when I think of the potencial that could have been (at least in my one single opinion), I get jealous. But at the end of the day I must remind myself that it takes alot of hard work to become an official technic designer working for Lego, work that I have not done. So I try to remain purely constructive in my critisms (unless for comic effect ), So don't sweat it guys, Anio, like me, shouts, because he cares

You are kidding right?

See, I told you you'de like it This one is my favorite front end loader, by far better than any other.

I think I might just wait to see what the second half brings. The tow truck looks great and very sturdy but I generally don't like tow trucks because they are pretty boring IMHO. They could have made it more interesting by having front and rear live axle suspention as well as it's current functionality, with almost 1000 parts it's easy enough to do, instead of the standard fake engine + steering set-up. Honestly, how many times can they re-design the same thing in the same scale. It does however appeal to me more that the log loader that's for sure.

awesome

A well thought out gear train need not break anything, however i'm sure many gears have been left in pieces in the dirt before now.

The liscence would be good because of the way the track pieces fit together in the game like Lego pieces. I think with a motorised train, the track could be standard ABS moulded pieces, no harder to make that the tracks for lego trains. The rollercoaster trains themselves would have to be more sophisticated to run on that kind of relatively inexspensive track. I'm thinking that it could have a motor with some clever electronics and a couple of sensors in it. It would have a tilt sensor so that the electronics could tell the motor to speed up or slow down to create the illusion of proper, to scale speed when going up and down inclines. That would be much better than a train zooming down a supposedly large hill in less than half a second only for it to not get up the next hill that's only half as high. It could also have a colour sensor on the bottom, so that placing black 1 by x tiles on studs on the track would be like having a chain lift (the colour sensor would pick up the colour of the black tiles and tell the motor in the train to drive slowly at a constant speed). There could even be a little speaker to play the chain lift sound at this point, and it could play other noises like screams when there is a drop and so on. It may sound cost prohibitive but it's two or three cheap little sensors, and cheap little circuit board and a little motor designed for mass production so I don't think it would be that expensive for Lego to produce. Having those electronic would also enable the use of fairly unsophisticated track. As long as it's moulded as accurately as any other lego piece it's all good. The tracks could also be made much longer if the consumer wished to buy more track without fear of the train not getting round. So even with all of that tech in the trains, I don't see any reason why a large rollercoeaster set should be much more expensive than a regular lego train set.

Whilst a rock crawler could be great, depending on what new parts it has, I think I would prefere a monster truck with new, power puller sized moster truck wheels (really big tyres on a relativly tiny wheel), inside which would be a new planetary gear reduction hub that works with very little friction and can take lots of torque. Oh and, of course, two new motors, a proper servo for steering, and an L-motor with no internal gear reduction.

After reading the lego minecraft thread, it seems they got 10,000 votes withing two days to make a liscenced minecraft set. This sounds all well and good at first glance, I mean, the two worlds are surely very compatible. But as a fan of both Lego and minecraft the more I think about it, the less excited I get. The draw of Lego is more in the details and the quality, whereas the draw of minecraft comes from exploring vast worlds, so maybe they are not so compatible after all. However it did get me thinking of another idea I had which gets me more exited the more I think about it, Lego Rollercoaster Tycoon. Think about it, you could have many different, large track pieces (like lego trains but many more different parts to choose from including twists, corkscrews, loops, half loops, different radius corners, level to backed pieces and so on), supported by simple constructions made from technic axles and snapped together just like the pieces in the original 2d rollercoaster tycoon game. You could have the large rollercoaster sets plus many smaller add on sets like a station with motorised gates for the passengers and other rides like the swinging ship and so on. You could have add-on track pieces and different train designs and much more. This theme could be absolutely massive! You could even have a motor in the rollercoaster train to help it round larger tracks as well as a small video camera thingy (could be shaped liuke a very large and fat minifigure!) that lets you ride the rides! What do you think?

Well that one is entirely up to you. I know what I would do, but if you are not too keen to open a new one, then why not get a used complete one?