spadgy

I love this! I so enjoy a small model relatively packed with functions. Bravo!

Your description sounds like you already have this covered, so I'll really post this for future readers finding this thread as they strive to solve their IR unit woes. When I built the Volvo L350F set, I - being an expert idiot - put one battery in the IR controller the wrong way around. Pushing a single directional lever blew the thing. These little chaps seem especially sensitive to battery mistakes, so be super careful. I know how to put a battery in a device, and yet I still blew my IR receiver in an absent minded second! EDIT: Grammar!

The 42030 Volvo is great value (especially as it's often reduced right now) if you need to build a good founding Power Functions/RC base for MOCs. If you add up what you would pay buying all the PF/RC elements as separates at RRP, then the Vovlo is great value in terms of all the other parts on top of the electronic bits. Cracking build too!

I know I shouldn't be surprised by anything in Youtube comments, but tha person's angle seems absurd. Youtube is a video platform; not a store front, so why he feels entitled to buy something from you is beyond me. I guess people don't like to be told they can't have something when they feel they can get what they want with their money. Still, with all that aggression from this person, I don't think he deserves much in the way of bending to his demands. Anyway, I take a great deal of pleasure and learning from your MOC and review videos Sariel. And I've built plenty of elements and systems from your available instructions, from gearboxes to Schmidt couplings, and I've learned loads and always appreciated them (you may have seen me post those on Twitter and adding you to the Tweet). In fact, while I've enjoyed and appreciated many 'full model' instructions from other builders, I do get something distinct and valuable from the 'component MOCs' you release instructions for Sariel. Because your MOC instructions focus on one element or system, I'm more focused on that and learn more about it as I builf. With those 'full model' builds from other (again greatly appreciated!) MOC builders, sometimes I can complete whole sections of the model without really appreciating what system or function I've been working on, and exactly what's going on within it. Keep up what you're doing just as you;re doing it, I say! EDIT: Also, what pgplay said!

Yeah - the panel-free style is great. Maybe I'll try and apply your approach when I'm struggling to find a panel of the right shape!

Thanks all! Lovely, friendly seeming place here!

I like it. Micro Technic builds are great fun. And there's a little spring-less 'suspension' here, right?

Thanks both! RNLI is Royal National Lifeboat Institution. I've sat over a keyboard most of my career, and I'm no mariner in terms of experience, but moving to right by the sea (I can see the lifeboat station from my house) I've got really involved, learned loads, and now I love all that stuff. RNLI is a charity; it uses no tax payers' money and covers water out to 100 miles all around the UK. It's great to be part of!

Hello. I'm a long time Lego fan (first set in 1984, Lego Club member pretty much since. At 35 I've still only got a Lego set from parents/wife etc. every Christmas since), and while I've never had a year without buying a few Lego sets for casual building, in the past few years I've become a furious Technic devotee. My other key hobby is really arcade gaming (tinkering about with soldering irons and arcade machine parts, chasing shmup high scores) and I learned what forum etiquette I have in arcade forums (big up the Shmups Forum crew!). My topic title here is a bit misleading; I still play too many video games and have worked in and around the video games industry for nine years, and love it. But I'm bloody adoring another obsessive hobby that - this time - doesn't mean to much screen time. Other than that I skateboard a lot, listen to lots of aggressive/pretentious/silly electronic music (breakcore, Balkancore, raggatek, speed techno, etc.), and I'm a bore about insects and birds. Love a bit of nature. And I'm as of fairly recently volunteer launch crew for the local RNLI lifeboat station. If my pager buzzes, of I run to help launch a massive boat! I definitely have some RNLI equipment-themed Technic MOCs planned! Great to meet you all!

So just to surmise in case I missed something (I did read it all!, I promise), there's the old friction pins (slotless), and then two forms of modern slotted friction pins (the common thin, and the mysterious think slotted pins)? Did I get all that right? And these pins that are so hard to pull out; they are old pins, and it's the part that they are sitting in the causes the difficult removal process? I'm glad I found this thread. Because not so long ago I though I spotted a thicker slotted pin in my parts; then I absentmindedly tossed it back in with about 2,000 normal slotted friction pins. I've been half looking for it since, and increasingly convinced I'd never really seen that pin. Maybe I have a few in the pile! EDIT: I'm back already. This thread sent me to an old bag of older and very disorganised Technic parts I've been meaning to sort for months. I separated them from my scruffy childhood Lego about a year back. 90% of the contents of that bag is the Technic Control Centre MK1, and what did I pick from it's remains? A number of the thicker slotted friction pins detailed in the OP here. So to really confirm what others including Erik Leppen said, these slotted/thick friction pins seem to be the earlier variant of the slotted friction pin. I also found some of the older non-slotted friction pins in the same bag. Maybe that (very loosely!) suggests Technic Control Centre MK1 (set 8094, from 1990) was about the point slots arrived. Rebrickable lists the TCC1 as having slotted pins, but certainly doesn't differentiate them from the modern thin slotted friction pins. Seems certain 1990 (perhaps earlier) is the place to take the time machine if you want some thick slotted friction pins.

With apologies in advance for my skill at being an idiot, isn't Trango after differential locks rather than the standard Technic differential? I've not built the Unimog set myself, though, so I may be misunderstanding what's included in the Unimog! You can build a Technic differential lock, of course... but does the Unimog set inlude these? Sariel's Technic differential lock diagram below (and his article on it is here). EDIT: Grammar!

Thanks Jurss (love the mini supercar!) and thanks JJ2! And to be clearer JJ2; what I meant to ask was; should the fold hack be done to every Power Functions connection brick (as seen in your diagram) in a MOC's circuit (so on the motors, IR unit, extensions etc.)? Or should it just be done to the connection brick on the adapter cable that runs from 9V BB at the 'start' of the circuit? Or perhaps it's just done to the connection brick on the IR receiver? Sorry - that probably wasn't much clearer. Here it is put another way... What Power Functions element is the connection brick in your diagram connected to? Thanks!

Thanks JJ2! I was just about to come back reporting 'I think I've found what many of you already know'! The 9V BB certainly powers Power Functions lights and motors direct (using the adapter cable, of course), but the moment I introduce an IR receiver into the mix, it all goes wonky, and doesn't work. Where might I introduce that foil hack? I do a bit of poking around arcade cabinets/PCBs with a soldering iron, so I'm OK with electronics, but where would I need to add the foil. Presumably, it's right through the circuit chain connecting from battery to IR and motors. Or is it just at the first Power Functions point on the adapter cable?

I have that 3D printed Efferman worsen diff (bought through Shapeways). I warm to the purist arguments, but I rarely resist curiosity around 3D printing (including far beyond Technic), and it's a great little diff. It was easy to clean up (and I'm a real amateur there), worked well on a test chassis for me, and proved a great way for me to understand the benefits a worsen brings.

Ah... I just ordered two MiniZips yesterday, and then spotted this post. I have two working battery boxes of this 9V kind from the Space Monorail set already, that I'd clean forgotten about. Oh well - I guess now I have two options for 9V batteries! I'm going to try and install the official Lego 9V batteries in a MOC I recently built (Chade's mini RC jeep) where I had to use the AAA battery box over the rechargeable one (which I don't yet own). The AAA box was too heavy (introduced too much traction and really strained the power, killing acceleration), so I'll see if I can swap it out for a 9V box tonight. I'll let people know how ell that works out! EDIT: Apologies for my necro-bump here!