Stereo

My plan, obviously made easier by owning 8445-1 Indy Storm, is to use the much older 6594 49.6x28 tires. They have a nearly-compatible wheel size to current 49.5mm tires, maybe 0.2mm smaller, on the outer lip, on one side of the tire, and the other fits 4 stud round plates. So I'll probably build up something of this nature - in picture it's 42716 wheel (thanks mini-Tumbler) and 2 layers of plates. Have to check what style brakes the actual car uses, if they're at all visible; if not, black macaroni tiles around a 2x2 round tile with pinhole will polish it off neatly. Relative width to 20mm wide tires is pretty good, 1:13 math says both are a little narrow. Should be ~23/34mm wide... going 28 front and 34 rear with the above 14+20 on the same axle might be the play. Other things I tried that didn't work as well - old pulleys (they fit but stretch the tire), 4x4 turntable (fits the inside surface of the tread a little too tightly - but looks quite nice texturally), 10 tooth splat (again it's just a tiny bit too tight on the inside surface of the tread - would want to source some dk. grey of course), both versions of the Model Team wheel (original too small, new one's the right diameter but too wide to be useful)

Use Airbus 5 blade part to build a 5 piston radial engine, for small scale airplanes... I think dimensionally the pistons would mount on the first ring of holes, and occupy the 2nd, so the outer crossaxle holes are still available for attaching exhaust parts and so on.

Main one I see is a part for 90 degree offsets in the crank. Like what you'd get by gluing two 2L thin liftarms together in a + shape. A new rod piece that's more standard (half stud thick pinhole at the crank end, towball other end.) could be useful outside of engines too. Or even take it a step farther, make 3L and 4L "rod" parts as thin liftarms with pinholes at both ends, and use a half pin as a wristpin in a new piston piece... If you change the rod design, the two cylinder banks need a 1/2 stud offset from each other, but that's easy to build and also realistic to how engines are constructed.

Huh, eyeballing it, it might fit over the single finger side and be able to rotate without the clicks. Neither's really a simple enough shape to know for sure. Crossing my fingers the Koenigsegg Jesko comes with them, much more likely to buy that than this bike, unless I see a sale.

Wow, those should also be useful for making Stephenson valve gear for early steam locomotives. Not exactly high force on the yellow pins pulling though, so maybe not for actual pneumatic engines.

Oh, that's a good point, I only showed the operational aspect, not a focus on the mechanism. 87408 "toggle joint" is the only unusual piece, the rest's mostly plates and Technic bricks. In the 'open' position it lies flat on the 2x10 plate to the right beneath it, and in the 'active' position it's stopped by the railroad ties. Also using 11458 1x2 with pin hole, for pinholes aligned with studs, 1x1 or 1x2 technic bricks with 2 holes work, but are taller. Altogether this is 4 plates below the train track, 3 for the structure and a 4th so the bevel gears aren't on the ground. The elastic band is holding the teeth together, so turning the handle 90 degrees lifts it up first. The yellow tile between the ties is to indicate alignment, matches the points of the teeth pretty well. Moving the handle farther stretches the elastic and spreads the teeth apart. In design, I have a bushing on the end of the axle for the elastic, but this is an older one that's quite stiff, and going straight onto the axle stretches it less. In practice the shunter's motor can't be back-driven, so it stays still, and the other cars move, but the stationary tooth also holds a buffer to stop it from moving. Two ways to modify this for symmetry purposes - Move the black 12t gear to make the handle rotate in the other direction. Move the tan 12t gear and stationary tooth, for it to spread in the other direction. And of course the whole thing can be built flipped symmetrically if it's more convenient to have the handle on the left of the decoupler. Or the handle attached from the other side of the tracks.

I recently got a used set 60051-1 High Speed Passenger Train, with some extra tracks - for a total of 30 each curve, straight, and flex pieces, plus 3 switches. It's the first time I've had a motorized train. After running it in loops for a bit, and thinking about what I actually want to operate, I decided to build a small switching yard, using the classic Inglenook puzzle layout to make sure it's got enough interest. To fit the space and tracks I have, I aimed for cars built on 6x16 plates, acquired more wheelsets and couplers, and went for it. I found some MOCs on Rebrickable, tweaked them a bit to fit the dimensions, and then couldn't find a shunter that met all my criteria at once. So I designed my own. Due to where I built it, I would have wanted two left-hand switches, but I compromised on having the closer one switched from the far side of the track. I might change that later. The whole thing is built as a siding from a loop track off the right side of the photo; a level crossing marks the end of the puzzle. The tracks fit 3, 3, and 5 cars. Left to right, starting on the top row: MOC-5453 Stake Wagon, 4544-1 Car Transport Wagon, MOC-61497 Tank Car, MOC-61570 Cargo Wagon MOC-61575 Small Gondola, MOC-68296 Barrel Tank Car, MOC-61570 again, MOC-61639 Hopper Car, and the shunter. Six of the cars are built to the identical 16 stud baseplate, the two tank cars and shunter are 17 studs long because of practical piece limitations. One side effect of this is that the middle shortest siding can't fit both tank cars at once. Fortunately due to symmetry in the puzzle, that's never required, it's just an additional thing to keep in mind. The other two sidings have about an extra third in space past the minimum 3 and 5 cars, so they can fit the slightly longer cars. Actually playing the puzzle is a matter of pulling 5 random plates out of the gondola, and building a train with those cars in order. (medium azure, yellow, white, lime, blue, dark orange, reddish brown, and red) One of my other goals was to not have to touch the train while operating the puzzle. Other than when the magnetic couplers refuse to stick to each other anyway. So I built a decoupler that inserts a pair of bionicle teeth between the buffers, and pushes them away from the locomotive. Raising the liftarm lifts the teeth into place. Pushing down rotates the left tooth, separating the magnets enough for the shunter to pull away. On straight track, this works well - the decoupler on the right, marked with yellow, can decouple full strength magnets. But there are a couple problems with this. First, a couple of the flat cars are so light that they can actually be derailed if they're decoupled too violently. Second, as soon as the cars are in a weird position because of the squiggly part of the switch track, the buffers are too far apart for it to work. Third, once it's transmitted through axles and u-joints, there's a lot of flex in the system, so farther away decouplers work less efficiently. Problems are resolved by attaching 44728 bracket to the couplers - only on one end of each car, since the layout has no turnaround. This reduces the 'full strength' by quite a bit, downside is that a bad coupling is hardly enough to pull cars on flat track. But they do decouple consistently. There might be better options in minifig neckwear that have a partway between compromise, but as it stands, if they're all connected properly, there's no issue pulling all 8 cars. The shunter is not under as tight length restrictions because it's only affecting one track length (distance to the level crossing), but I was designing my own anyway for other reasons, so my targets were Use parts I have. Mostly this means Power Functions, with train or M-motor. Low speed. The decouplers have about 1 stud of wiggle room, I don't want to have to go back and forth a bunch of times trying to stop on a dime. Shorter is better Low hood, 2 axle design. I want it to look like a small shunter, not a medium one that happens to be very short. 4 wheel power for maximum pulling for its weight. In the end I did reach my goals, although the build is at least a plate taller than I'd really like, if not two. I had designs that were lower, but they either couldn't connect front and rear axles, or moved them so far apart that it didn't look prototypical anymore. With the design I went with, the 12 tooth bevel gears fit as close underneath the battery box as possible, and there's only one layer of tiles on top of the battery box. The motor just fits inside the doorframe, its bottom edge is sitting on the sill. 1x4x5 train doors would technically also work, but I don't have any. So instead I'm using flags to cover the bottom half of the window. Accessing the power switch is a matter of lifting out the jumper plate using the exhaust pipe. I'm not playing roughly with it so I don't expect it to fall out, but it is just resting in place. Can't get a lot more compact than that - the transmitter is sitting on the plug on the battery box, and the bottoms of the transmitter and motor are touching. Wires are wrapped around the motor and folded into the 2x2x4 open space under the transmitter. A downside of this is that the remote works more consistently from in front of the shunter than behind it. The front coupler is touching the battery box, so no room to make it shorter there. The motor goes down through the coupler at the cab end, then a series of gears forward through what should be a pair of 4x6 technic frames. So far it's been performing exactly as I need, has no trouble pulling all 8 cars, and the puzzle never requests more than 5. As for what it still needs, aside from parts I don't own, ie. a different doorframe (dark bluish gray?) and consistency on the roof (black? dbg?), I'm debating swapping tan for dark bluish gray. I feel it's a little too busy in colours, having black-dbg-tan-lbg-red, and the red is bright enough that it won't start looking drab if more of it is grey. I'm not sure about colour theory, but the tan might also be making it look taller? I might also try putting the windows a stud lower. I don't have a good camera, or tripod, but here's a short video of the shunter and decoupler in use. Lower than 1:1 gearing might have been nice, but this slow speed is adequate.

42168 is an obvious choice if you want gears, first set to have more than 2 of the 28 tooth gear (it has 6), and it has 14 other usable gears. The 42179 orrery on March 1 is probably gonna be decent too, hopefully in a week or two there'll be some reviews of it that include an inventory.

I'm not certain I'm understanding the part you want to modify, but if you use 1x1-1x1 brackets at both ends, they're not attached by studs, but they also can't move separately if they're pressed together. (symmetrical top and bottom, tile-> <-tile <-bracket, and bracket-> tile-> <-tile). Part 4585 is how Lego solved it on the Orient Express, but they're only available in white + dk. blue yet.

Yeah, I played with that to try to add 2 speeds to the bike's 4 speed, with a relatively small lump added to the transmission (+3 length - 2 for the driving ring, 1 for the gears to get power to the 3rd shaft, +2 stud width): If you name the outputs (left to right) abCDef, the shift patterns that are easy to do are aeDbfC (how it's set up; it currently has 'b' selected), eaDfbC, DaeCbf, DeaCfb. Some of which use two of the black knob gears, some use one of each type. With the actual specific gears I'm using, it's -1.67, 1.67, 1.33, 2.78, 5.0, 2.22, which is six different ratios but not yet in a good order. Would need a spreadsheet to work out the actual sequence needed, I'm thinking the 8:24 and 12:20 need to be the ones that get reused, otherwise 8:24 (5.0) is too far away from all the other ratios as it's a pretty big jump. The 16T gears on the left are either reverse (-1.67) or 1:1 depending which 20T dark azure gear is connected, and fit in-line with the shift forks, so it's only adding 1 to the length of the transmission to use it as 1:1 instead of reverse, and width/height are unaffected.

If I'm understanding the pictures right, anywhere from 0.5 to 1.5 stud (ideally 1) works; which does mean it's not compatible with the shift drum. Shifting on the secondary is a good idea though, if you only need the 1 extra higher ratio for a 4 speed that's probably fine. Do the forks clip onto the previous 18947 3 length driving ring? Stud.io doesn't have the new one to test with.

You could use the 1:1 input to output without the secondary shaft as the 4th speed, so it'd be 24:8, 20:12, 16:16 onto a second shaft, then probably 12:20 to bring it back in line: gear ratios 5.0, 2.78, 1.66, 1.0. Or use one of the smaller gears on the primary shaft (12:20 or 8:24) so you'd get 3.0, 1.666, 1.0, 0.6 leading out from the secondary shaft. If you have the end of the primary shaft go into 65414 differential, and clutch engage the same side of it, then the other side is a 1:1 output, so that's a viable option that doesn't really misuse parts. It does get in the way, though, as the differential's fairly large. 65414 differential is effectively a 28T clutch gear too if you don't install the spider gears in it. I suppose that would pair with 12T so you'd have 28:12, 24:16, 20:20, 16:24. That's 2.5 stud separation of axles though so not as nice to build with. And it's 3 studs long without the ability to run an axle through it, not ideal.

Yeah, I've got a feeling there's some way of getting it to do the right thing, maybe with a new part or just different way of integrating things. For example, bar with towball into a half pin could access the 45 degree points, or if you could place a ball just past the axle the shift fork slides on. (this second one's not really secure enough; the thin liftarm constrains rotation but not completely. I don't have the parts from the bike to test whether it functions in practice. A 'dummy' second fork would make it rigid but get in the way) The second one seems more practical for this gearbox, because the forks would be on the same axle, and thus have 45 degree offset in the 2 forks on the same side of the transmission. But the first one has the side benefit of +8 gearteeth on one side, so if you have 32 tooth combinations on one side (8-24, 12-20, 16-16) you get 40 on the other (12-28, 16-24) More offtopic, but I think a manual transmission could be interesting with these forks, something like this.

Now that I see your calculations, it's making me puzzled why Lego did the 45 degree offset in the two axle holes of the drum. Cause I see that, to run shifters on the two sides of the drum, each drum has a LR**RL** pattern, which means they have to be 90 degrees offset from each other (+-90) to hit all 8 gear selections at different times. And flipping the drum end for end doesn't change its pattern, it's a symmetrical part that way. So you need to undo that 45 rotation between the drums. The text engraved in the drum means flipping end for end "shouldn't" be a problem for expert builders but maybe they wanted that symmetry. If you took a different design approach and had the intermediate shafts 90 degrees apart (say left+down from the drum) it changes to a DL*D**L* pattern, which needs a 180 degree offset to hit 8 different gears, still doesn't work with an axle straight between the drums. I think this kind of right angle gearbox could be fairly compact (seems to fit in a 7x7x13 unit box, vs. this one is 5x11x13, so technically lower volume) but it doesn't fix the issue. I can't even make it work for 4 drums on a single shaft; the patterns I find are permutations on (1A)4B(2A)1B(3A)2B(4A)3B which uses each drum's "A" engagement 90 degrees later. For 3 drums of course you get 6 speeds by going 1A 2A 3A 1B 2B 3B so maybe that's the intended "simple" transmission?

I was wondering about that colour for the orange Huracán recolour, as the new space sets have 11L beams and #5/#6/#9/#10 panels visible, plus a few unclear from photos (32316 5L beam probably, 80286 is more likely red), so it's not like they're limiting the new colour to a few tiles and the modular doorframe part. They definitely make the actual car available in shades similar to both oranges.

Hi, I've been collecting Lego for a while, but I just recently got a used copy of 60051-1 Passenger Train, first exposure to Lego Trains I'm trying to get up to speed on practical use of Power Functions in MOCs, as a lot of the ones I've seen instructions for use the newer Powered Up. Since PF uses IR I'm expecting it to basically need line of sight from the remote to the train, but how much leeway is there actually? Does the whole dome need to be exposed above the train? Will it work ok if it's inside the cabin with glass in the windows? It came with 3 switches and about 32 each of the straight/curve/flex pieces, so I'm working with a small room sized layout, don't need all that much range. I've been planning out an Inglenook setup at one side, so I'm also playing with some designs to decouple cars without reaching into the layout. I found a few online that block the trucks and use the locomotive jerk to disconnect the magnets, maybe my drive wheels have slightly dry rubber but that doesn't really work for me. So I'm playing with a dual-actuation mechanism like the recent Technic garbage truck, to put a couple bionicle teeth between the buffers and then spread them out. I've got a working prototype, at least for the passenger cars, now I need to build a few freight cars and see what it makes of those. https://bricksafe.com/files/Stereog/decoupler/couplingteeth-1.jpg (picture of it open left, then activated right, turning another 45 degrees pops them apart). The level crossing in 60051 is flat with the top of the tracks so I've been assuming it's generally safe to build tiles up that high, are there more specific guides on how much clearance to aim for, if I want to post the MOC and have it be useful to other people? I have the teeth sticking up, but they're 5 studs away from the track, so they're safe for the passenger train even near curves.