S.I

In germany: Karstadt had them marked down to 40, and Ratio had them for 40 and had an additional 20% off all lego for a total of 32 euros.

The stores in my area are trying to get rid of their inventory of older lego sets, and I have seen the front loader at two different chains for less than half price. Might be part of the source of the LAs.

For that price I would buy a tall stack of em :D

I had found one a couple of months back in summer clearence for 70 euros, maybe someone else is lucky and will also find one. (Ratio in germany) They also had frontloader for 40, and the windmill transport is still stocked for some really low price by me.

The german site says "schienen", which are railroad tracks, and not "ketten" which would be treads.

Ok, I'll remember that. I built the first portion of it, so the treads+underbody, and once I add the 6 axis (which used to be a 4 + stop) the friction increases dramatically on that tread, no matter how I position the gears on that axis :( More precisely, once I add the gear to the bottom of that axis, the axis itself with the right angle conversion works fine

I'm gonna rebuild my excavator this weekend, with the modifications. Besides the longer axis above the turntable (6 instead of 4), the different gear setup for the dual linear actuators, and the minor change for the motor switching gears, are there any others I should be aware of? I dont have any of the old differentials not in use, so I wont be able to put one inside the turntable, unless I missed a trick for using the new ones.

Thats what I meant, I just wanted to be sure that is normal because the instructions do not mention that.

I just finished building mine, I tested the gearing of the undercarriage when I was done with that part and one track was slightly more stiff than the other, however in my motor section the gearing for the same track is much stiffer. I did not manage to track down why. Also I have to reverse the motor direction of a track on the remote so that the tracks sync up, is this normal?