Jonas83

Just an update: Today i was contacted by Lego and one of their employees came to my house to pick up my copy of the 8043 Excavator for testing purposes. I only live about 20km from Lego headquarters in Billund. He was very nice to talk with and they are of course really sorry for the problems their customers are having with the model. I can tell you that Lego are working very hard to locate the cause to these problems, that some of us are having with the excavator. Hopefully they can provide a solution to us in the near future when they get it solved. I wish them best of luck.

I have just recorded a video of mine to show how poorly it functions. In all the videos of the 8043 i have seen, i believe mine is functioning the worst. As mentioned before i took great care and time in assembling mine, so i don't believe that i made any mistakes in the process. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sYqxMd1ehI

Hello! I am new to this site and have just build the Lego 8043 excavator, and unfortunately mine is suffering from the exact same problems as described here. I have build many Technic sets over time and this is by far the most troublesome. This was not to be expected and is very dissapointing by Lego. The problems with mine are: Main boom arm: Mine can almost not move up or even down at all, the motor barely rotates and is clearly overloaded. I have checked that the double actuaters are aligned and also tried realigning them, but with no change. Clutch switching function: works very bad too. The motor has big trouble switching the cluthes and i often have to push the lever manually before it engages them. Right track: moves very slow and struggles compared to the left one that works ok. Middle boom arm: Moves acceptable but struggles alot when moving to upper position. Bucket: Works fine both up and down. Slewing: Rotates really well and effortless. Fresh alkaline batteries was used. I have sent a complaint to Lego customer service but i have not heard from them yet.