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Commander Wolf

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Everything posted by Commander Wolf

  1. Commander Wolf
    Best part is it isn't even running at full power since the battery tops out at 7.5v, while 9v motor is rated for 9v o_o Yeah, it's a pretty typical RC car battery... about 1.5x the capacity of the PF rechargeable box, though NiMH means it's heavier as well. I would have liked to get one of those flat, 8-cell, 9v packs, but they didn't carry any at my local hobby shop.
  2. Commander Wolf
    Hey all, I don't usually build much Technic, but this model slipped through the cracks. I wanted to make a simple RC car that was fun and easy to drive. This post is kind of one and a half MoCs... the Morgan is actually my second attempt at such; the first was a freelance car I called the .I used the RC motor because it was fast, and I had one. I used conventional RC equipment because I don't like the tradeoffs made on either of the PF controllers, and I wanted a bigger rechargeable battery. The GT1 drove well, but the unconventional suspension setup took up a ton of space, leaving the electronics hanging out and the trim hanging by just a couple studs... the exposed drive train also broke at least two old 16T gears. Thus, I built this car in response to those issues. The prototype is a 1935 Morgan Super Sports; I didn't try to model it exactly, rather, to save on parts and weight, I tried to outline it in the way that 80s and 90s Technic outlines vehicles, and I think it worked out pretty well. The hardest bit was probably suggesting that the body ends in a circle, which still doesn't quite come across. I'm using a 7.2v, 1600mAh NiMH battery hooked up to a cheapo "waterproof" ESC and an ancient Futaba two channel reciever. A chopped 9v cable is plugged onto the ESC to drive the RC motor. The three wheeled setup makes it easy to have indepedent suspension and enough space to not have the electronics floating around. It also eliminates the need for an exposed drivetrain. It's pretty entertaining to drive, mainly because you can drift on dirt or flip it if you aren't careful. That being said I'm happy that it's generally robust enough to survive flips without losing too many parts, but it's the fastest way to chew up your bricks. Video: Brickshelf: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=546217 Have a nice day!
  3. Commander Wolf
    Like all of my Technic wire is gradually turning into this mess... though it's not quite as bad as those greasy, crumbling tires they made for a while in the 00s. That being said, it looks to me that it might be possible to non-destructively dismantle the connectors and solder new wire to the contacts. It's probably not any more difficult than opening up the 9v motors, but I haven't gotten around to trying it yet.
  4. Commander Wolf
    Alright, a final update for this model. I went to Toys R Us the other day and picked up a 60052. I stole the PF components from the set, installed them in the T1 tender, and ran some tests. The wheels are geared up 2:1 from medium motors, both by neccessity and to try to increase the top speed. It was a real pain to fit all the wires into the thing. If not installed a certain way, the PF cables coming out of the motors might not have enough horizontal slop and might prevent the bogies from swiveling freely. It's probably possible to dump the "coal" ontop of the PF equipent and hide just about everything, but I didn't try it. Ran some tests and stitched some clips together to make another short video: Overall the performance was pretty uninspiring. It can start two 9v motors at notch 3 or 4, but you really aren't going anywhere 'til you notch it up all the way. Even then it's not particularly fast, and I bet it's running through those AAA batteries like water.
  5. Commander Wolf
    Interesting choice of mechanism for the driving rods. Interesting choice of color for the pax car too... Motorization is tough for NG, especially if you want PF... all that PF infrastructure is just so massive. I doubt they'd make switches for NG, but I could definitely see straights. In fact I'm surprised they haven't done it yet.
  6. Commander Wolf
    Hmm, so is the ram the front or the back?
  7. Commander Wolf
    It's a lovely ship with some nice greebling, especially for the size - I didn't realize how small it was until I looked closely. I would argue, though, that except for the color, even with the trans-yellow trim, it doesn't quite capture the essence of CS ships, at least not nearly as much as the smaller delta-wing ship in your Flickr.
  8. Commander Wolf
    Wow I didn't even know this set existed. Or that some 9v motors had that little ridge around the pin. I'm surprised no one has made this mod before!
  9. Commander Wolf
    Yeah some guy on BrickLink made a ton of $$$ off me as I basically had to buy every curve-slope on the loco. This was one of the big benefits of CAD: you can see what your model would look like before deciding whether or not to buy the parts. Yeah, the firebox is only possible because I decided early on I couldn't have an interior. The box doesn't take up much space, since it's just a ring that goes around the load-bearing structure, but the SNOT in the boiler meant that the hinge and supporting stuff had to go behind the box inside the cab along with the SNOT for the doors and the trim just ahead. Anyway, running quality is pretty important to me so I usually end up doing a lot of tweaking (like lightly oiling axles and joints in the motion) trying to make everything run as smoothly as possible. This isn't quite as smooth as my ACE was probably due to the working rods and such, but I'm pretty satisfied with the performance, and I finally put together a quick video. Lighting isn't amazing, so I might reshoot it; maybe when I get all the PF stuff together.
  10. Commander Wolf
    Cute ship, especially for what seems like quite a low part count. I love it when people make the little diorama to go with their MoCs too!
  11. Commander Wolf
    Art Deco is best decor. This one isn't quite as slick as the gas station, but I think it's just the nature of the building type. Nice work.
  12. Commander Wolf
    Looks like everyone has the same thought as me... lack of steering is a killer. For the price I'd rather get the PF Volvo Loader.
  13. Commander Wolf
    Cute video... but dat Chocobo music! Was there supposed to be some sort of story? I couldn't quite tell. I would be worried about the heat, but only because I had a traumatic accident in which I left a bunch of MoCs in my car on a hot day and all the bricks got super loose. Super fail.
  14. Commander Wolf
    Thanks for the comments guys! About the chassis: the front truck is just a regular 2 axle truck. The structure supporting the first set of drivers cantilevers over it, and the structure of the second set of drivers cantilevers over that. The trailing truck with the sliding axle is towballed to the back of the second set of drivers and pinned to the body. The body is also pinned to the cantilever of the first set of drivers. Most of the joints are pinned here because I had a lot of trouble navigating bumpy tracks with my ACE 3000 and 5AT locomotives which pivoted on turntables. The pins give a bit of vertical play such that leading and trailing flanges are less likely to leave the track when you go over a bump before a turn, etc. In general I think it's been working pretty well, but we'll see when 5503 runs at a show.
  15. Commander Wolf
    EDIT: Instructions are now available on Rebrickable: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-102718/NonsenseWars/148-pennsylvania-railroad-t1-duplex-v3-power-functions You can see some new footage and an updated explanation in the following videos. Also cleaned up dead links from the original post.
  16. Commander Wolf
    Duplo MoC is best MoC... awesome and hilarious!
  17. Commander Wolf
    I've thought about this on more than one occasion, and I did make an Excel spreadsheet of all of the MISB sets that I have and all of the sets that I've reassembled and stored, which came about to be just shy of 100k. That being said, I still haven't come up with a good way of estimating sorted/loose bricks, but I can't imagine those being more than that 100k... so I'd say somewhere between 150k and 200k.
  18. Commander Wolf
    I go by a scale, about 77mm per LU, and try to build to that scale. Some things are thus 8-wide and some 7, though oftentimes there's sparse to no data on the widths of various locomotives.
  19. Commander Wolf
    I would like to second, third, and fourth that these are pretty amazing. I really appreciate how you captured the rounded underside of some of the bodies as I think it's something often overlooked. The DCC and sound are just icing on the cake.
  20. Commander Wolf
    This is great; is there any significant difference in performance after swapping the motor? Could you run a powered something with both a stock 9V motor and a modded one without any ill effects?
  21. Commander Wolf
    I love these old boxcabs, especially the ones with big drivers... they are just so different from everything else now and then. I am personally planning on making a DD1 someday, but so much other stuff in the way!
  22. Commander Wolf
    Well, I hope 2 months isn't too long be bumping this, but I didn't really think it justified a new thread. After another two months of procrastination and development hell, the T18 is finally done! The locomotive hasn't really been changed too much externally, though I had to rebuild almost the entire chassis at one point to reinforce the structure that supports the gears that keeps the drive rods synced. The drive rods and turbine output wheels have also been changed. Here is a comparison of the final model with my reference drawing. I think the overall proportions are pretty close, but the greebles, especially piping, were very hard to do in Lego. I also could not find information about the actual width of the unit, so it's only an assumption that it's supposed to be 7-wide at scale The condensing tender was not necessarily a difficult built, but there was some funky geometry used to get the slopes at the top and some SNOT used to attach the panels that overhang the wheels. The geometry for the latter worked out so well I couldn't believe it! I'm doing something new in connecting the tender to the locomotive. Rather than using a magnet or a half beam, I'm using an adjustable mechanism such that I can make the locomotive and tender as close to each other as possible without interfering in curves and switches. I'm still drawing conclusions on the practical limits of this coupling, but on the last day of the BayLUG Christmas display, I doubleheaded the T18 behind another fairly heavy locomotive, and the assembly held up and didn't compress. Finally, a bonus! Here is a simple gondola that my friend and I are planning to mass produce for running at shows and displays. It is largely in the spirit of the 4543 Railroad Tractor Flatbed. We were looking for a design that could suggest both American and European rolling stock (so that we could run the same train behind American and European locomotives) and we thought that 4543 did the job well. Anyway, here is the final gallery when moderated; any additional thoughts are appreciated!
  23. Commander Wolf
    The 1x1 tiles are a really interesting choice for the stripes in the front, but It doesn't quite suggest stripes to me. Since you're already making decals, I'd consider making the nose a solid color and using decals for the other color. Also it should be 8-wide
  24. Commander Wolf
    I agree! I think if you want to modify it, doing something similar in the front would balance it out very well.
  25. Commander Wolf
    Updated model and video. See below for the original post. Instructions also available on Rebrickable. Hey Train Tech, long time no post. This MoC has been a WiP for a long time now, but with my local LUG's Christmas show coming up, I'm trying to make a push to get it done. The T18-1001 is a German steam-turbine locomotive designed in the late 20s. Unlike my previous two "advanced steam" models, the T18 was actually built in 1928. As far as experimental locomotives go, the -1001 and its slightly younger, slightly different sibling, the -1002, were moderately successful, though steam-turbine traction never really took off anywhere. This unit went through several modifications during its 12-year history; I'm referencing a later variant as depicted in this lovely Trix model. The scale is my usual 155mm per plate height, which makes the locomotive approximately 7-wide. The length with the (very work in progress) tender is 64 studs, magnet to magnet, and it can negotiate all of the usual Lego track features. In my opinion, the distinguishing physical feature of this design is the crank from the turbine between the two pilot axles, so I had to make sure the whole assembly worked. As I really don't like using flangeless 3B wheels for anything smaller than XLs, the chassis is articulated 2-4-4-2, and the two sets of driving wheels are connected with the same mechanism as the one in my ACE 3000. All the (asymmetric!) turbine greebles between the wheels and the boiler were a nightmare. Anyway, I'm looking for any thoughts while I'm still working on the thing (and thus actually motivated to change it!), especially with regard to all the said greebles on the locomotive. I feel like this really needs like 2.5 diameter rounds and 1.5 diameter tubing, but I haven't been able to think of anything better than those freestyle wheels and vanilla 1x1 rounds, respectively. Here's the (once moderated) gallery of mostly wip pics; more, better pics to come when I can get the tender done.
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