allanp

Ah, my post was confusing, when I said 50% thinner I didn't mean half as thin, I meant two thirds as thin. I should have said 33% thinner But yeah they are still the most realistic technic wheels yet.

I think the problem is that lego wheels are generally far too wide to be in scale. They should probably be 50% thinner, which sounds alot, but looking at real world road vehicles the wheels always seens much thinner.

The new one, in the new half stud longer length as only seen in the unimog and only in grey? Now that is weird! Nice one.

that's the parts for the lego education pneumatic set. Which motor pump did you get?

That's true. I was/am thrilled with the quality of the 8880 I bought not long ago, it's just like new. It has the catalogues, the spare parts (service) thingy, the half empty sticker sheet and very minimal shelf wear like you would expect buying it new from a shop. Problem is it does not have the little clear plastic tray that holds the special parts so if anyone has one to spare or to sell, please let me know

8465 is the only other set I can think of right now with the same metallic green parts. Shame really, it's an awesome colour.

As far as I know, version one was not that widely distributed as they found the problem very early on. The ones that were distributed were recalled so they should all now be version two.

All I know is the stickers are different. Other than that you should be fine I think.

I had this problem with the silver champion. However after beeing diemantled for a long while the tyres returned to normal. I think mounting the model on bricks to remove the weight from the tyre seems the best solution.

It depends on the surface. For outdoor trail trucking the tread pattern is much more important. That being said, I feel the grooves in the tread pattern in the unimog tyres are not wide or deep enough really. I would go with a balloon tyre, the power puller wheels are best I think. Happily the new gear hubs in the unimog fit perfectly inside those wheels, meaning you can have a very strong and robust way of having a 1:3 final gear reduction at the wheel (seeing as an 8t and 24t gear will fit inside the hub). So for me it's those hubs that make the unimog great for trial trucks.

ditto!

Should do. In version one there was sometimes a problem with the small cylinder leaking causing the system to lose pressure. That has been fixed with version two. Luckily the problem was spotted very early on.

Come to think of it, I have yet to hear a rumor re upcoming technic sets that has turned out to be false. Plus, the guy who started this rumor (can't remember his name off the top of my head, sorry) has been right so far about the 1h2012 sets. So whilst i'm trying really hard not to get my hopes up, i'm fairly sure that a 180 euro RC rock crawler will either be a boring dissapointment (with just drive, suspention and propultion) or it will have some awesome new parts that I have been waiting and asking for quite often here for a very long time. The suspence is killing me!

Well you asked, so be prepared to once again be bored to death reading one of my usual rambles The M motor is not strong enough for this thing and the XL motor is too slow and creates too much stress. What you end up with is a model that breaks gears whilst going very slowly. That you need is a motor that can deliver lots of power (more than the XL would be nice but not needed for this) but does not put too much strain on key parts. This can be done by having a motor with much higher rpms, and less torque. Basically a motor that's powerful but has absolutely no internal gearing down. Non at all. Like the 9v motors of 1996 and older, just a bit more powerful of course! Then we can apply our own gearing that is suitable for a gearbox or whatever we want, and also protect parts using the white clutch gears. So not an XXL motor, but an L motor. I think what is also needed is a differencial that can fit into the 5x7 frame, but instead of being driven by a 20t double bevel gear, is driven by a 12t single bevel gear (so the diff itself has a sort of hollowed out 36t double bevel gear instead of a 28t single bevel), and can also have 4 gears inside instead of three. The gears going to the wheels could possibly be the 20t single bevel instead of the 12t single bevel. This would effectively more than double the gear reduction of the diff (by having 12t to 36t instead of 20t to 28t) and triple the the amount of torque it can deliver to the wheels. Of course other parts will need to be beefed up and redesigned to deliver more power more efficiently and more reliably but with a new L motor and diff, you are halfway to making pretty epic RC vehicles, all out of plastic! Of course we can't just add more volts and more amps until we get what we want, this would just wear and melt things too fast. Thing is the XL motor already has the power. But with it's internal gearing and the current parts selection it can't be used efficiently. I see the Unimog with it's portal hubs designed to take an 8t and 24t gear to increase the power to the wheel as a step in the same direction i'm talking about.

That orange plough looks freakin amazing, it matches it so perfectly I think I might pay the money to get those panels and build it myself.

I think it's entirely possible that we COULD get an RC 180 euro rock crawler that can actually climb over rocks outdoors, just not so much with the current motors and gearbox parts. So the thought of it is actually getting me quite exited although I know I should not get my hopes up for thes new parts based on the info we have so far.

There is Lugnet, but it's not as active as eurobricks.

That's true. Many of the trail truck MOCs are awesome, but not suitable for an official release due to the strain on existing parts, especially motors, bevel gears, gearbox parts, ujs/cvjs and diffs.

What can I say, I am a master of subtlety

Fully agree. If next years flagship is a 180 euro RC rock crawler then it really should have more than just propultion, suspention and steering. A new, more realistic gearbox that can take lots of torque using lots of new parts would be awesome. And one of the things that puts me off RC flagships (apart from making it more of a toy than a realistic reprisentation of real life) is the lack of a proper servo motor. At least then we could have the realistic represetaion of real life (like gearboxes, pneumatics and so on) with the added benefit of being remote controlled, using servos to control gear changing, pneumatic valves, steering and so on. Oh and longer pneumatics is just

Is this whilst the Mog is moving or standing still?

That's what I was thinking, like a caricature of a viper. Nice!

Those rear mudgaurds look very realistic. On most kinds of vehicle like this the rear mudgaurds always look a bit too large and imposing when there is nothing else around them (like a trailer above them) just because we are used to seeing something else there to hide all but the side edges of the mudgaurd. I suspect they will look like a great improvement to the original design when the rest is finished.

8880 had the best/smoothest gear change, although still quite unrealistic. The 8865 also had a working 3 speed gearbox along with some earlier sets (known as auto chassis) but those don't use synchromesh type gears, they are crash gearboxes. The gearbox in the 8480 is a function selector gearbox (the first to use synchromesh gears) like many of todays sets. For some great info about how they work, visit Blakbirds technicopedia..... http://www.ericalbrecht.com/technic/ .....and find the 8880.

Try reading this thread. http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=48718&st=0 hope it helps