allanp

Even better!

I think it's actually a battery bank.

It might be an easy enough mod to do, though perhaps better with PF rather than PU, so we can use the PF extension cables. I wonder how many motor pumps could be squeezed in there!

I don't think the pre-production one looks that much better, I prefer the final one TBH. Although, the pre-production version doesn't appear to waste parts on an entirely non functional box. Lego actually has a working battery box, with real electric pixies and everything! Maybe they could have added a motor pump to the excavator and have it be powered by the otherwise useless box via a new PU extension cable or something. Add in the third cylinder for the excavator bucket and have the trailer ramp be pneumatic with an extra foldy-out bit at the end. A little more cost can bring a lot more value.

Well, fiber optics are back, that's cool. I will also say that the overall design of the car looks great! But with that big monolithic hub, which contains everything of mechanical/technical interest all prebuilt for you, there's nothing there for me.

It looks nice, I like the printed trans pieces for the headlights, the double rear wheels and the overall shaping and design of the cab looks great. And there's pneumatics so that's always a plus. But I feel like there's something missing. Maybe a sense of ambition or, I don't know, it's not quite grabbing me like I thought it would. The excavator is very bare bones, and it's a shame the arm and bucket movements are linked instead of being separate. And I still really don't like these small pin style piston engines. They are better than not having any engine at all, but if they are going to make new pieces for the Kawasaki motorbike then could they not have made an actual crank mechanism instead of a cam based mechanism? I'm also never quite sure what to make of these sets that have multiple builds instead of using the same number of pieces to make one big build. This set has a certain price point and piece count, but being split up over 4 builds, we end up with 4 small models that individually can't really match it's price in terms of functionality. We get a fairly basic excavator, a fairly basic truck, a fairly basic trailer and a box with a piece of string. There's no one thing that makes me think "Yeah, this is awesome". On the other hand, you do get 4 builds instead of just one (although you can just buy 4 small sets anyway), and when you combine them all together, they make for a fairly good play experience. So I think it will have good appeal to the target audience. For me, I don't know, I'm kinda torn on that. So 4 years in a row we have had a pneumatic set, that's enough to call it a pattern and of course y'all know I love my pneumatics, but now I wonder if it's time to shake it up a bit. All 4 for the pneumatic sets over the past 4 years have been in roughly the same spot in the early summer wave, never the first wave of smaller sets and also never the flagship set of the year. And yes, I am still so very grateful that they are still bringing us pneumatic sets, and that they made them bigger for the Arocs in 2015. Buuuuuuuuut, looking at the real excavator, does anyone else get the feeling that the pneumatics in this set still look a bit undersized even for this rather small excavator? I know some people have been asking for the return of the medium cylinders, but with the way sets are getting ever larger, I feel like the 2x11 cylinders are the new medium cylinders. I also feel like the real life concept is a bit silly. A lithium battery powered excavator, with an even bigger lithium battery pack that just begs to be a diesel generator? For the most part, they are still burning fossil fuels, only in a power plant instead of in the vehicle itself. But maybe in future we get an abundance of electricity from totally green sources (not likely we'll ever have enough if every vehicles needs a crap ton of electricity), and lets say they replace the entire power grid to handle all that power, they store this energy in a massive lithium battery that has a whole new set of practical, cost, environmental and ethical issues. I'm not convinced this is the future. Hydrogen burning ICE however.....

This looks pretty good! I wasn't that excited for it, bit the effort they have put into the new wheels and fenders really does a lot for the set. The tires are grey and the mold looks about as close to the real one as they could get. And the fenders are pearl gold and with a printed American flag? Now that feels premium. It's also more mechanically interesting and novel than I expected given the subject matter. Maybe not mechanically realistic as such, but we can expect/allow that for Nasa sets in general. But am I missing something here? There's 4, 6M track links that are offset 90 degrees? Is this new for this set? I don't see people talking about it like it's new, but I haven't seen it before and can't find it in any other sets. It's a great new piece anyway! Edit: Just read the general parts discussion thread.

I wouldn't think so, that one can take 11.1 volts.

Maybe they bumped it forward a year to 2025 for Technic?

I was actually thinking this exact thing, but wondered if I was reading too much into it. While app only control and RC/PU might well be popular to the customers that small RC cars like this will appeal to, it hasn't been that popular with us lot. Yes yes I know, we're a small minority and all that, but I don't think it's egotistical to say that we know Technic, we know what it can be and what it should be better than the masses, and without knowing the limitations the designers have to work with, we're free to dream a little bigger about what Technic can be. I think that makes us worth listening to. And even just as fans of Technic themselves, I'm sure the designers still want to give us "the good stuff". So it actually makes sense to contain all the PU/app based stuff in this one piece, pleasing the marketing department with this solution that makes no compromises in terms of being smart device controlled and having instant gratification and all that. They keep all that alive with this new hub, while not having to maintain a whole suit of PU technic elements, freeing them to work on a new system that is more suited to Technics "build for real" mantra. Maybe with physical remotes, more separation, less reliance on smart devices and coding (don't mind if it's compatible with that, but never liked the total reliance on it), they can offer us, as well as children, something real like Lego is meant to be. Real toys with real controls and paper instructions so there's no total reliance on owning or using a smart device to play with Lego, which should always be the best real toy there is.

They might as well make it in the shape of a car and be done with it. They can re-release it every wave with a different sticker sheet. But just to state the obvious, this isn't aimed at us. They probably said "the fans will hate it but the masses will eat it up". Hope we didn't disappoint!

No. Just....no! It's as if someone said "let's take everything that makes Technic an abysmally overpriced shadow of it's former self and condense it into a single piece." An RC with comically poor performance and masses of mechanical slop/play compared to similarly priced competitors that use proper ball race bearings and metal bushings and linkages that don't have a yard of free play and physical remotes? Check. A build devoid of mechanical interest and authenticity, thereby removing any advantage Technic had over it's competitors? Check. All the mechanics, including gear reduction from the motor is pre built, so there's less mechanisms for the customer to actually build themselves (which is kinda the whole point of Technic) leaving only boring body work left for the builder? Check. Finally a rechargeable battery, that isn't backwards compatible? Check Probably gonna be solely app controlled? Check (though this is so bad that even a physical remote can't save it. Yes, it's that bad!) Something that probably cost so much time and money to develope that there was less time and money available to develope other things, like an actually good and true Technic alternative, working brakes for the 1:8 supercar or a fully programmable physical remote/control center 3/control center+? Check. A build that's soooooooo mechanically simple, that has zero mechanisms to mess up, that is about as complex as a Star wars battle pack, that we still have to fill it with far too vibrant colour vomit in a failed attempt to make sure there's never ever a dreaded mistake ever made by anyone ever? Check. A reminder that we live in a world of instant gratification, where too many children own smart devices and are spending far too much time on their smart devices and Lego has no desire to actually make this poor state of affairs any better for children, only worse? Check.

Judging by the previous comments they do come pre lubed, and mixing lubes ain't always good. If we know what the pre-applied lube was though it wouldn't hurt to add a bit more in this case, they do look quite dry in the pics.

That's good to know. So when they wear after a bunch of very high speed use, they get to like the old hubs? I can live with that.

Wait, there's actual (albeit plastic) bearings inside of these?! How are people finding their performance after some time of playing?

The suspension looks to be working really nicely. Also just found out the wheel bearings have actual rolling elements inside them, so that makes me like it even more!

It doesn't look like you were limited to the parts of one set at all, very impressive

Nice progress so far

Drat! I would have gotten away with some speculation if it wasn't for those pesky admins! *shakes fist with poor animation*

Tan has also appeared in Technic star wars sets. I don't think the McLaren will be orange. My guess is that it'll be purple, not that I'm very excited for that colour, but there's been a fair few Technic parts recoloured purple lately. I'd prefer something more luxurious to match the high price tag it'll have, like a metallic colour. Regular purple, nah, but a metallic deep purple, that could look sexy AF! Though even better would be a metallic dark red (someone resprayed the big Technic Ferrari that colour and it looks worth the RRP of the set) or a metallic dark blue, a metallic olive (like 8466) or even a gun metal grey would look fantastic!

Very cool machine and very well presented. Nice work, thank you for sharing . Would be cool to see a sort of pull test, like how much weight can this beastie move? I bet that on a smooth hard floor, towing a skate board or something, it could haul a fair bit of weight!

The proper pistons should fit easily enough, no need for unrealistic Kawasaki stuff. The Unimog had an inline engine over a sprung axle, so does the Arocs.

Or they could do what they did with the 8480 box, and show it from above and behind....for some reason!

Impressive, I like all the functions you got in there.

The Arocs is objectively the best set ever IMHO because of its new parts and instead of settling for just a basic chassis they gave it full live axle suspension, more authentic steering linkage and double rear wheels. Except for the LA used to lift the bed, it was as close to "build for real" as you could get at the time, meaning that it feels like building a real truck in miniature rather than just an expensive toy. I believe the Unimog was kind of a tester for that, and it also felt very "build for real", but the Arocs beat even that IMHO. Of course there's still massive improvements that could be made over the Arocs in terms of "build for real" but it's the best so far. In terms of what sets put the biggest smile on my face for nostalgia reasons, 8868 and 8880 are big winners of course. 8459 and 8455 are also awesome smaller sets. Out of the past few years, no flagships sadly but the Airbus helicopter, 42128 and the 1:5 Yamaha motorbike are the day one buy winners for me.