allanp

I like it, for a 1:10 scale car I think the suspension is okay, and at least it's slightly different to all the other cars. Adding the front wheel drive to the fake motor is a welcome addition also, and yay for working steering wheel!! If it was a 1:8 car I'd be dissatisfied with it but for a 1:10 scale it's pretty good.

I would trust the members to show an accurate pile of leftover pieces. The "rule" for leftover pieces would be that voters will be more likely to vote for you if your leftover piles are small. If you show the model with the leftover pieces together on a scale, the weight should be identical for all four, but then not everyone has digital gram resolution scales. Eh, it's an idea for when you're running out of ideas .

Just another random idea for the pot (after the shrinking contest), how about a universal set contest? Rules would be: 1) Build 4 different models from the same parts. 2) Each model must be entirely different (not 4 cars for example) 3) Priority is on the mechanical rather than outward appearance but it's better if it looks cool! 4) Must have a theme, for example every set has a motor/battery box or pneumatics or just purely gears/linkages 5) Remakes of old universal sets are allowed but voters might penalize you for lack of creativity. 6) Studless and studfull both allowed.

Yeah I'm thinking of the counterweights, likely 2 hubs and large truss pieces, and also the price, as price per kg is more accurate than price per part, I'm thinking that an expensive set also means a heavy set, even more so if the weight is inflated with counterweights. It will be interesting to see how price per kg is affected by counterweights.

I'm not so sure, only a guess but even at 1 - 1.5 meters I feel like the 5 wide tracks would be in scale but that's only a guess. I also wonder if the off-centre ridge on the cat d11 tracks would lead to clunky operation under very heavy loads. I have a feeling that the crane will be at least 50% heavier than the cat, maybe even double the weight, without it's 500g Payload, with a smaller area in contact with the ground.

It's smaller than that, about 1.5 to 2mm. I've bought some replacement tubing from http://www.blokbricks.com/contents/en-us/d2.html in the past, very good stuff. Can buy long lengths in a variety of colours if needed.

It is quite wobbly, not as rigid as the normal cylinders because there is no top seal.

Oh yes, the flip up lid and the desirable parts displayed in their own special bits tray, yup, that'll get ya!

@Jurss I'm not sure it's all whining, we are trying to figure out why the set is so expensive without knowing enough about the set to do that, so basically were all just chatting! But let's not stop lest this place die if inactivity! But you are right in that it most likely won't change the price, only a significant drop on sales will do that. But Technic is a unique theme in many ways, what fans want from a 700 euro Technic set will be very different to what fans want from a 700 euro star wars set, and maybe there is some use to us saying what that is. They certainly don't have to obey our every wish but that doesn't mean they are not listening.

Well the old rumour was that it would have 1 kg of counterweight pieces. How much do the models say that will cost?!

Captain, I believe this ship is drifting!

I tend to find reviewers all have their own different biases, unbrickme wants a set with a gearbox for example. We all have our biases and opinions and I don't see why reviewers should be expected to be any different. But I really don't sense any bias in favour of Lego due to being given sets "for free". I say "for free" in quotations because going by my hourly rate at work, the time to film and edit a review for YouTube would cost Lego more than the set is worth, so it's not really for free, it's compensation for the time and effort spent making the review. Secondly, I haven't based a buying decision based on a reviewers own opinions of a set, but rather by seeing the sets functions in action, seeing how realistically the functions are recreated and the parts list. These are things that remain the same regardless of if the reviewer is "sucking up" to Lego or not. It is true that sucking up for freebies happens in other industries, especially movies, but Lego can't hide the final product from their audience like you can with a movie. So, as much as I might sometimes disagree with a reviewer, the fact is that I can disagree, and the idea that reviewers are giving false positive reviews for free Lego is nonsense, at least from the reviewers I have seen.

I wanted to display the UCS millennium falcon on my wall, so I added some beams to the inner structure that hang out the bottom and make a wall hook (also out of Lego) and just hung it there, it's been there for 3 years, definitely the cheapest solution but it's a pain to dust! I am very tempted to make a plexiglass cover or something. It's pretty easy to cut and smooth the edges to a professional looking finish with a plane and scrapers (the edge of a metal rule makes a nice scraper btw).

Well there might be a silicone shortage which is pumping up the prices of electronics but that doesn't make it more valuable to me as the customer, at least not when it comes to non-essential things (and especially speaking as a fan of the more mechanical Technic, not the more electronic and coding based mindstorms), but I have a hard time believing that price is accurate anyway. If it is correct, even with my tendency to come up with fanciful new parts, it's hard to think of new parts that could both be reasonably expected from Lego but at the same time worth that price. Actual hydraulics with hydraulic motor drives for the tracks, winches and slew ring would be worth that price, but I don't think we could expect that from Lego. We could probably expect a metal hook, but that's not worth that price. A combination of a new motor with the power of the buggy motor (and it comes with many of them), metal hook, and a physical controller with a number of fully proportional dual axis joysticks and many many buttons, then we are somewhere in the ball park of that price. But wouldn't it be better to release such a controller as a separate PU accessory anyway? It's too early to get too annoyed with the price though until we know more about the crane and know for sure that is the actual price. I do hope the price matches the product though, I haven't bought a flagship technic set since 42100! While they release 18+ sets and super expensive sets, my favourite sets have been neither of those but the sets just below the flagship, such as the airbus, material handler and pneumatic tow truck, and that not because they are smaller and cheaper, but because they have the heart of true Technic. I'd love for there to be a 400 Euro or 500 Euro Technic mega flagship with the same focus on mechanical representations of real life but have yet to see it from Lego.

Haha, nout wrong with a bit of banter

8288 is on pick a brick?! Or do you mean the boat weight?! I wonder if the new weight will be brick based or diecast metal like the old hook or the off center weight from control centre 1.

That picture with all 5 models makes me miss universal sets even more, excellent work.

The height decrease might not be a bad thing, and it also might be misleading in a way. Wasn't 42042 advertised as being a certain height but also came with an extra piece of boom to make it taller? This is pure speculation but there may have been some stability issues which lead to a safety issue with it falling over. We know Lego is obsessed with safety (4 screws in the technic hubs is ridiculous!). If there's any chance of a 5 foot tall model crane operated by a 10 year old falling over then they will probably rethink it. If however they include a few extra things then they can still release it as it was meant to be. If the included cables are long enough, if there are three winches included (upper boom/lower boom/hook), if enough counterweight is included aaaaaannnnddddd if extra boom sections are included, then they have circumvented any safety issues by saying look, here's the set and instructions and anyone with the desire to build it much taller than we say in the instructions is free to do so, but we didn't say they can do that so it's at there own discretion! Maybe that's why the advertised height has come down but the price hasn't? Maybe the redesign was to make it more modular and reconfigurable into different setups and heights for this reason? Also a very good point. This new crane should be able to lift way more and still look solid with no bending. It should fall over long before it breaks. And size isn't everything, well, maybe it is for a crane, but "big red" is one of my least favourite cranes despite being the biggest!

Maybe the mounting points for the cylinders will be different?

I'm not sure I follow. The description says 3 movements and claw and seat rotation. To me that reads as 1) up/down 2) forwards/backwards 3) rotation and then we have claw open/closed and seat. But descriptions have been inaccurate before. Descriptions from promobricks tend to be more reliable though, so I wonder what they will say of it.

That's very well done. With 5 functions that work well in a smallish model it definitely has that old school technic vibe. The placement of the controls is good too!

I did think that also (didn't want to mention it incase it lead to disappointment!) like if there's some new rotary pneumatic actuator (not continuous like a motor, but like 180 degrees or 270 degrees of rotation) it would make more sense of the description. It says three movements of the gripper, but on the real one, one of the three movements is the rotation of the claw. So if they have one there I guess why not add one for the seat also? So it would make more sense of the description but I don't want to get anyone's hopes up. I must not be disappointed if there is no new rotary actuator, only very very happy if there is one.

Well, I guess someone has to complain about it so here we go.... No working steering wheel? Oh my poor sensibilities! Smaller brick based cars can have a working steering wheel but not a Technic set? Triggered! I also wouldn't say that I prefer the clear cylinder blocks over the bluish grey ones. Heck I prefer the old light grey blocks with the dark grey cylinders! But the clear ones don't seem too bad in this smaller set. Still it does look very nice and I still like the dark blue colour. It also feels a bit like the colour coding is nicer, perhaps a few too many bright red pieces and I wonder if he's trolling us with the random lime green part lol! I also suspect that I'd feel differently had the set had more gears and wave selectors which would have been green, more red, orange and so on. But overall the colour coding does look much better than previous sets. Those new 7 long flip flop beams come in a useful colour and I'm very happy to see the still quite rare 3x19 frames. Normally I'd skip right past these 1:10 and 1:12 scale cars but I might actually get this one

We haven't seen it yet, but one translation of the description sounds very much like there's 5 pneumatic functions (maybe more than 5 cylinders?) as well as steering, 4wd and engine. Also bear in mind that part count is not a good indicator of price. Weight is a much better indicator. So if this set has bigger and heavier elements then the price also goes up. Possibly class tyres, possible 3 x 19 frames, possibly even a motor? We don't know yet.

Oooooh, that sounds very much like there's 5 pneumatic functions!