allanp

In real life you can take parts of cars and trucks and cut and weld them to make cranes and so on, but you can't realisticly make a helicopter. An areoplane would be easier but still. So even in real life the parts that make a helicopter are so specialised as to only be useful for helicopters. A lego technic kit would require 95% of the parts to be specialised to that one set. Lego technic can't be THAT specialised, it would not be Lego technic. However, that does not mean Lego as a whole can't do it. It would be fun to have a new flying theme with all specialised parts (like bionicle, but you know, cool ). You could have various rotor heads and blades and wings that could be interchangeable and even ballons, all kinds of crazey flying contraptions could be made. It would not resemble lego much, but then niether did bionicle.

Ah yes the inventory, I can't wait to see that. Thankyou very much guys for all the effort and posting so many pics, you made this communities day, week and month with that!

Yes it does seem the wrong one was supplied to them. I bet that didn't roll along very well.

My guess is that it's just a standard axle, or maybe an axle with stop. The hole in the middle of the dark grey piece seems large enough, I guess there is a cross hole deeper inside the hole. As for how the diff drives the engine, I've just come across this. Look at the intructions. The image at the top is saying not to use the newer differencial, but the older one. I had suspected that they had used the wrong diff here in construction, now I know.

We'll have to see. It's using double the stroke that the 8868 used but at a slower rpm (bloody internal motor gearing!) so I may just speed it up a bit because my pneumatic stableisers mod will need a bit more speed to lift the entire truck quickly. As the set is tho this pump should be plenty powerful enough.

I think it's got a rack and pinion to lift the bed, like the barcode truck, or did you mean for the steering?

In all the unimog excitement I almost forgot about this set!

Dluders way is better, but I just pull them off without squeezing the grey tabs with no problems, just saying to re-assure you they won't break.

The main draw of this set for me is that it's got motorised pneumatics and all it's wonderful new parts and all the details never seen before in an official technic set. I'm already planning some mods for this set which once implemented will make it the best set of all time. 1) add pneumatic stableisers. I understand that for TLG to add these would have made it a bit more expensive, but I hate these non-functions that have the control knob attatched directly to the function itself. 2) Redesign the gearbox. Make it all less MOCish and more complex by reconfiguring it so the motor can drive the wheels when selected whilst also driving the engine at all times. The gearbox and the stableisers kinda looks unfinished/lacking in complexity and the most expensive technic set should not need modding. However these minor issues are understandable if the time of the designer was taken up designing those lovely new parts and i'm far from dissapointed with the set as a whole. Besides I recon it's got around 50 gears. Combined with the motorised pneumatics with all it's valves and tubing and the suspention/4wd setup with it's realistic hub gearboxes, panhard bars and torque tubes I would consider it MORE complex than the 8043 (and a BAJILLION times better), which had about 70 gears but nothing else complexity wise and unrealistic mechanisms. Oh, almost forgot 3) enable the steering wheel!

This thing is amazing, it may not be perfect, but it's the closest TLG have come in at least decade and a half, maybe the closest they have ever come to perfection. BTW that new grey pneumatic pump sure does look longer to me, maybe only half a stud, but that's enough to make it line up better with beam holes.

I also noticed the other design on youtube and I thought it was pretty good for it's smaller size, but was also dissapointed by the unnecessary and childish description

Or you could just do a tug of war! There is much more to efficientcy than just the gear ratios, for example, worm gears are not as efficient as the same reduction done using spur gears. The use of ujs or cv joints can also have an effect. Then there's the friction of the drive train with in itself can be affected by many things like twisting of the chassis. So if you really wanna know which one puts more of the power from the motor to the floor, just do a tug of war.

Yeah, i'm fairly sure the unimog will be operated the way you suggested, i'm just saying this amazing set would be even better the other way. The PTOs should not require much power, so i'm sure the motor can drive both the PTOs and the compressor OR the driving of the model. Those parts do look very similar (even tho the colours are swapped) but I don't think it will be exactly these parts, they don't even have a hole for a drive shaft to go through them.

Thanks I haven't sent it to lego, there are parts that I am much more eagar for them to produce. However TLG, at least the technic guys anyway do read these blogs I think. If they like it, maybe they could be inspired to make there own version.

That's cool. Wonder what happens if you use a pf motor

It seems to be a win win for everyone, lets make sure we buy lots of them so it's a win for TLG too! I have also thought the pump seems a bit longer and have wondered what that white thingy is. I really do hope they continue to overhaul the pneumatics range because of course I think they have yet to make the most wanted part(s) . Damb right i'll go crazy!

Could be. That 6L steering link that is being used as a panhard bar and the ball joint leads me to think that it's like a torque tube. That ball joint also looks to be the thing that holds the rear axle on. Now i'm wondering if that light bley ball and the new c-shape beam is actually one part that clicks into a larger dark bley socket. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque_tube

That round part looks very interesting, like some kind of large hollow ball joint that would normally house a cv joint in steerable/driven axles. There are so many secrets in this set my heads gonna explode

Such a thing would be very useful. I've done a sketch of what such a tool could look like. I did think of adding a sort of pry bar to it but it might be too sharp as I cannot recall a single edge in lego being sharper than 90 degrees. What other additions would anyone like to see to this tool?

The car and driver website says this: "and sports a fully pneumatic gripper arm mounted aft of a pneumatic “dump” bed." I know this has been talked about, but does it have a dump bed or not? I can't see a switch for it but the website seems to be pretty spot on with the other details. They must have been told by lego what functions it has otherwise they would not have known about the hub gearboxes and so on. It also says it is electrically "driven". Does that mean motorised wheels? Im not that optimistic for that, but it sure whould be cool because at the moment, this awesome set seems to be lacking in nice geartrains for the largest technic set ever. I've already said how that would be operated, but for those who missed it, the yellow lever would switch between driving the wheels and the compressor, whilst the red lever would switch between the front and rear PTO. This would mean you could operate the pneumatics and the rotation of the crane at the same time. The engine would be driven directly by the motor regaurdless of what functions are engauged.

Agreed brickend. The unimog has alot of awesome new parts already, but in the future I really think we need some longer cylinders for this type of thing.

BTW has anyone else noticed the 6l steering links used to stop the axles swinging side to side. Although we have been doing this for years I think this is yet another first for an official technic set. Very realistic of a live axle I must say. Another BTW, off topic, I like those 8856's Parda, it makes me want to find my onw out and start building it. In fact I might just do that.

It looks like it's been photoshopped to hide a gear that drives the wheel. However I think part one is just a yellow half bush.

Until the unimog comes out, for me the 8868 is probably the best set ever, but there has never been a perfect set yet. There were two problems with the 8868, the main one was that the pump did not really provide enough power to the system because it only uses half it's stroke. Sure it worked fine for me every one of the many many times i've built it, even the first time when I was 8 years old. But i'm impatient. All the 8868 needed was a redesign of the compressor and it's pneumatic functions (especially the rotating of the crane arm) work alot better. The 8868 had a more demanding pneumatic system than the unimog (unless there are pneumatic functions in the unimog we don't know about yet) so I don't think there will be an issue even with the poor compressor design of the 8868. But still, I hope they do improve the performance of the compressor.

Oh wow, this is great, some sneak previews, awesome, can't wait for more, of for the set for that matter. Finally a new pneumatic part. Heres hoping for more new pneumatic parts in future as it is an amazing system that needs a bit of an overhaul me thinks. It depends how well it is used, but it can provide as much pressure as the large manual pump when used properly. One pump is enough half the time (assuming you want good performance). I hope the unimog at least uses the full stroke of the pump if it does only have one.