2GodBDGlory

Interesting working principle! Are you planning on creating a tutorial video at some point demonstrating how you made it?

Another option for increased travel is to create custom shock absorbers by taking apart a few 6.5L shock absorbers, taking the springs, placing them on an axle, and building a shock out of it. I don't know what your feeling is about taking shocks apart, though. Otherwise, it looks like a fun, powerful model with a sophisticated suspension design!

Okay, thanks!

Are the knock-off ones any good? I assumed they would be rubbish. Thanks again everybody. Great forum. I am not sure. I have a couple fake RC Buggy motors I got about five months ago, and both are working great despite some hard usage, including powering them from a hobby 9.6V battery. I have some other parts on the way that I have ordered; hopefully they will last for a while! Apparently fake Servos aren't much good, because they do not have any proportional control, and must rotate the full 90 degrees before coming back to center, even if the controller is only tapped. Nonetheless, I think a lot of the parts could be worth it, because (especially if found on sale) they can be between half to a fifth of the prices for Lego ones, so even if reliability is worse, at least replacements are dirt cheap.

I watched the video of this one, but, not understanding the language, I couldn't figure out how it worked. It appears that air is pushed down onto the cylinder head until the cylinder reaches the bottom, at which point it is sent out of the hole drilled down there. After that, though, I don't see how it could be pushed back up by the flywheel against the air. Besides, such a design would have no need for all the stuff on top of the block. Could you give me some more information please? Also, has anyone ever considered using a spray can of compressed air to run a pneumatic engine in a model?

Yep. Before long, the only tolerably cheap option for PF will likely be the knock-off ones. I believe Servos, IR receivers, and some other parts are out of stock (for me) at Lego Shop, and unlikely to be restocked. Once the rest are gone too, I imagine used prices will continue creeping up to the point where it doesn't make sense anymore to stick with the real stuff.

Very nice looking! Are there more images or a video somewhere?

Could it be designed as a performance motor to be used with a yet-to-be-released power supply? It's a long shot at best, though. Do any of you know if the electric hardware inside could take significantly more power?

RC Snowmobile This is a remote-controlled Technic Snowmobile! About this creation I don't really like how the model looks, but then I have little experience in snowmobiles. There is double-wishbone independent suspension on the front, and a swing-arm suspension on the back. Both the track and the skis can also tilt. A Servo Motor steers the front skis using towball links and a small rack. An L-motor drives the rear sprocket at a 5:3 ratio. Performance indoors was bad, because the skis couldn't steer. It was better in the snow, but still not as good as a simple wheeled vehicle would have been. You can see my video at: IMAGES AT: https://bricksafe.com/pages/2GodBDGlory/snowmobile 1:12 Jaguar F-Type This car is meant to have a lot of the sophistication and functions of my 1:8 cars, but in a much smaller package! About this creation Aesthetics: I think it looks pretty good, with LED headlights and a sweeping rear. It seems quite British from the back, but it reminds me more of Lego's Aston Martin DB5 than a Jaguar! Interior: It has a full interior, just like my big cars. The steering wheel works, and the seats can slide forward and backwards. Opening stuff: The doors open and have auto-locks, and the hood opens as well. Suspension: There is full independent double-wishbone suspension with one hard shock per wheel. Drive: There are two L-motors to power the AWD with a central differential and a micro V8 piston engine. It drove quite well! Gearbox: I used my new 8-speed gearbox (Type 1), posted elsewhere. It was shifted by an M-motor through a worm gear, and had a speed indicator. It worked quite well! Adjustable suspension: This was the hardest function to fit, and was powered by an M-motor through a worm gear, a whole slew of bevel gears, and four small linear actuators connected to the shocks. It lowered well, but was too weak to lift itself. Overall, I am quite pleased at this 1:12 car. I used to build almost only these cars, since they were the biggest wheels I had! It was fun to return to this size with my current skills, and I am pleased with the result. You can see my video at: IMAGES AT: https://bricksafe.com/pages/2GodBDGlory/jaguar-f-type Ichthia Epitome: Ultimate Supercar This is a car I have been working towards for a long time. I have tried almost all of its functions on simpler cars, so it was time to put it all together. This is [EDIT: Was. My 1:7 Chiron surpassed it, and a Ram Rebel TRX I just finished probably will too.] my ultimate complexity supercar, with just about every function used in Technic supercars. Because no real car has all the functions I wanted to include, I made up my own car, the Ichthia Epitome. About this creation Aesthetics: This car looks fine, I think, but the front doesn't quite have the feel of a high-end hypercar, with a bit more Nissan GT-R than there ought to be. Still, I like it. There are LED headlights and taillights, and actual mirrored mirrors, using a cut Lego sticker. Opening stuff: The hood opens manually and is nicely spring-loaded. There is a tiny amount of cargo space under it, which holds a spare shirt for the driver. The doors open with springs as well, and has the usual auto-locking locks. More unusually, though, I managed to hook up the internal and external door handles, so that when the outside handle is turned to unlock the door, the internal handle also moves. Because in a car like this there is very little luggage space (And I couldn't bear to waste ANY space!), there is an auxiliary luggage compartment on the one side. Inside is a Lego shopping bag. The rear engine cover also opens, but doesn't do anything fancy, because it has to open easily when the convertible roof operates. Interior: The interior is fully black, with dark grey seats. These seats can be adjusted forward and backward using small linear actuators, and can be tilted using worm gears. The gas and brake pedals work, as does the steering wheel. The glove box opens and holds a thermos bottle, which also fits into the cupholder in the center console. A very unique function of this car is the CD player. A disc can be inserted manually, and then ejected with a button. (The CD is supposed to be TobyMac's This Is Not a Test) There is also the switch for the pneumatic compressor, the pneumatic valve, the on/off button, and the center differential lock/parking brake lever. One way of this lever locks the center differential, and the other works as a parking brake by locking the drivetrain. Suspension: There is full independent double wishbone suspension, with four hard shocks and a rubber band per axle. Because of how low the car is, it is hard to see its affect, but I think that there is one. There is negative camber. Pneumatics: There is an M-motor running a compressor, which powers a single small cylinder that controls the rear differential lock. Drive: Two XL motors drive the car through three differentials. There is a flat 8 piston engine, and a Servo motor controls the gas pedal. This particular Servo motor's wire is wearing out, and I had no spares, so it only rotates one direction. This wasn't so bad, however, because it let me build more compact. Driving performance was decent for such a heavy, complicated car. (It was 7-8 pounds). Steering: The steering on this car was far from simple, and my favorite function of all! First of all, it has all wheel steering. In addition, there is castor, kingpin, ackermann, and toe. Also, the steering wheel works. The front and rear are driven by separate motors, and the one in the rear is dependent on what gear the car is in. The shifting motor flips a switch controlling the rear Servo, so that it has regular four wheel steering in low gears, front wheel steering in medium gears, and crab steering in high gears, just like real AWS cars. Finally, there are aero flaps in the front and rear, which work with the motors to "slow down" the correct side. Brakes: There are all wheel disc brakes using an M-motor, a large linear actuator, and a large sliding thing of beams. This pulls strings, which pull a rubber axle joiner onto the inside side of the Chiron brake discs. The brakes are very weak, but the brake pedal works, and strings are pulled to activate the front aero flaps and to tilt the spoiler. Gearbox: This gearbox was basically just my latest-design 7+R dual clutch gearbox, shifted by an L-motor at a 20:1 ratio. Sadly, I discovered that all of the odd gears wouldn't work, because the bracing for the two meshing 8T gears wasn't strong enough. There was a speed indicator in the interior. I really don't have pictures of just the gearbox, so you might want to check out its separate post (Coming soon to Eurobricks). I also put a monkey under the rear spoiler with a bunch of levers and stuff. No existing computers can give the Epitome the gear-shifting precision it requires, so a highly-trained monkey is provided. Adjustable suspension: There is a simple adjustable-hardness suspension using an M-motor in the front and an L-motor in the rear, that basically just winds up the rubber band to tighten the suspension. Windshield Wipers: The wipers were similar to the ones I have used previously, but geared to allow for a longer sweep. They use an M-motor. Spoiler Raising: An M-motor and two small linear actuators raise and tilt the spoiler. The tilt occurs when a string becomes taut. Convertible Roof: An L-motor, through a 24:1 worm reduction, lifts the convertible roof, stabilized with a 4-bar linkage. The cover is pushed up and down by the roof, and typically snaps shut dramatically! I am very glad to be just about done posting this! I am tired of typing! Anyway, I am very happy with this car's complexity and refinement, and it is going to be hard enough to top that I doubt that I will try anytime soon. [EDIT: And yet I did.] The biggest disappointment, though, was that half of the gears didn't work. I don't plan to build many supercars soon, because the disappearance of the snow lends itself well to outdoor 4x4s... You can watch my Youtube video at: IMAGES AT: https://bricksafe.com/pages/2GodBDGlory/ichthia-epitome

Cool!

I wonder how much work it would be to modify this into a street version. I'm not much into race cars.

Ichthia Northerner ETV This is a tracked SUV model, designed to drive in snow! About this creation This model is from my fictional Ichthia brand (See my Ichthia Marauder model for more detail), and is an extreme tracked edition of the Northerner SUV (ETV stands for Extreme Terrain Vehicle). Aesthetics: It looks sort of weird, being an Off-Road SUV without cool fenders, but they aren't needed with the tracks. The headlights work. I especially like the roll cage with the cross bars! Opening Stuff: The doors, hood, and tailgate open, and the tailgate has a simple lock. Suspension: The sprockets are suspended using a type of suspension I thought of myself (though I highly doubt nobody has thought of it without my knowledge!) [EDIT: I was right! I saw it recently in a massive road grader model] , double bar pendular. This works just like a pendular suspension, except that it has a second bar involved to keep the wheels/sprockets parallel to the ground all the time. There are also some road wheels in the tracks suspended with orthodontic elastics. Winch: There is a simple winch using a PF M-motor at a 24:1 ratio, with a manual disconnect function. I managed to haul it up the back of our couch using it! Drive: It is driven with four XL motors, one per sprocket, directly after 3:1 portal axles. I originally intended to order a second rechargeable battery for it, but it worked just fine with just one, though Lego only rates the battery for two XL motors! These motors were wrapped in shrink wrap in order to waterproof them against the snow without drastically lowering the ground clearance. It worked quite well. It worked well in the snow, though not climbing, and its only weakness for indoor off-roading was its high center of gravity. This model was fun to build, because it is my first real tracked vehicle. My video is at: IMAGES AT: https://bricksafe.com/pages/2GodBDGlory/ichthia-northerner-etv Ferrari 488 Spyder This is a new 1:8 supercar, but with the emphasis on visible functions rather than fun to build but useless functions like brakes and a gearbox. [EDIT: It is therefore much more like the average 1:8 build than most of my stuff] Aesthetics: I am quite pleased with how this car's bodywork turned out. It used an unusual-for-me number of curved panels (Most of them painted). The headlights and taillights work. The taillights are too small, but I don't have any 3x3 red discs to make them bigger. Manually Opening Stuff: Not much opens manually (hint hint), but there are two different rear panels, one of which covers the roof, and the other which is an engine cover (though it is far from the engine) Interior: The interior is pretty much the usual, though I forgot to detail the insides of the doors. The seats are adjustable using small linear actuators, the glovebox opens, and the steering wheel works. Drive: There is a simple drive train using four PF XL-motors, which are geared down 5:3 before the differential. All four worked just fine on one rechargeable battery! It is RWD, and there is a V8 hooked up to it. It was pretty speedy! Steering: There is steering with a PF Servo, and the steering wheel works. Hood: A PF M-motor uses a large linear actuator to open the hood, through a chain. It works well. Windshield Wipers: The wipers work using a PF M-motor using a linkage, just like in my Audi R8. Doors: The doors open simultaneously using another M-motor. This mechanism involves bevel gears, worm gears, and towball links. Roof: The roof is retractable using a PF L-motor. I originally used bevel gears, but they started to click, so I switched to knob wheels. Sadly, their bracing was too weak to last more than one operation, pretty much. Unlike my Audi R8, which used a separate linkage to raise the roof cover, this one simply pushed it up using the roof, and also managed to push it up when the roof went down. This worked nicely because of the sloped back of the roof. Suspension: There was full independent suspension. Each wheel had two hard shocks and rubber band springing it. It actually had travel this time! Overall, I was pleased with this model. It is the kind of car that is fun to play with, but not challenging enough to build. Therefore, don't expect my future models to be as simple as this one! In fact, my next 1:8 car planned is codenamed EPITOME... You can see a video of this car at: IMAGES AT: https://bricksafe.com/pages/2GodBDGlory/ichthia-northerner-etv (Under the ones for the Northerner) Mini Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 Here is a tiny off-roader, the classic Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40! About this creation Aesthetics: I think the model looks all right, though such an iconic vehicle is easy to make recognizable! There are some add-ons like a snorkel, roof rack with luggage, rear ladder, and an extra spare tire. Suspension: There is full pendular suspension, and the axles are linked with levers such that if one axle tips one way the other tips the other way. It works quite well, and I am pleased with this technique. Drive: Two L-motors are hard coupled at a 2:1 ratio, and then drive the wheels through a 8:1 worm ratio. Sadly, these 8-tooth gears get mauled much too easily. Steering: A Servo motor works a rack for the steering. It compensates for the tipping axle using a universal joint and a CV joint, the latter of which allows for some sliding of the axle. It works fine! Winch: An M-motor runs a series of gears on one side, culminating in a 20:1 worm ratio. This then drives a winch on the other side of the vehicle. This also works well. This model was fun to build, and performance was good for its small size. Sadly, the 8-tooth gears got badly destroyed, leading them to skip at key times. Still, I liked it. My video at: IMAGES at: https://bricksafe.com/pages/2GodBDGlory/mini-toyota-land-cruiser-fj40

Me too! I mean, how coincidental is it that they release the perfect tire for them in the same wave, but don't put them in these sets!

Good work! It is still much too large for easy use in a scaled model, but I know that isn't the point. It has been very interesting watching you develop the theory and then put it into practice.

Calling it poor design may or may not be accurate. By this, I mean that sometimes structural compromise is required to achieve more functionality. My models see this a lot, since I am rarely willing to sacrifice the internal space for a strong frame when I could use it for functions instead. This may not be the case with this set (perhaps it could have achieved all reliability, and functional goals while being significantly more rigid), in fact, it likely could have been stronger, but it is possible (though unlikely) that it was the best setup possible.

I don't have that part, but I have occasionally used the studded version in tight spaces in bodywork, and sometimes I suppose that pinned one would be better.

It is possible, but I think a pin with stud plus a 1x1 circular tile would be stronger and more likely. (Provided I understand your meaning)

Yeah, there are some, but they aren't very versatile.

I agree, and I don't think this opinion gets heard enough. Good list of interesting functions! I have personally built all of those except for the gear-controlled wing, built-in jack, and modular design. Out of these, a number of them could certainly make their way into real sets, but some of them are simply too unreliable and complicated to be used in an official set with current parts (Well, the brakes at least, if the brakes are going to be realistic, and the torsion bars would be anathema to purists {unless they made new flexy axles like the old 16L ones})

The price stayed the same in Canada, too. I guess we got lucky!

While dreaming of 32T gears...

Good job! It reminds me of that old engine set from 1980. The piston design is interesting to see; I have been wondering how I could build large-scale engines without the old square pistons!

Nice work! If only something like that were commercially available!

I've probably done that plenty of times on drift-focused vehicles--except it was always by accident!

I have to agree... I would probably never build such a vehicle on my own! I have used those parts as headlights on a 1993 Toyota Supra (A mistake on my part) and on the Ford Mustang GT500 in my profile pic (A much better idea) Otherwise, it looks like an impressive and interesting model! That may be the first model I have seen to use that wheel/tire combination, and the DBG color scheme is very unique! Good work!