Rockbrick

sweet and great colours

Life is too short for drama & petty things, so laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly...

nice use of classic technic pieces for the rear signal lights

Thanks! Just the springs and the drive axle at the moment - it could do with perhaps a panhard rod at the back - but to my suprise its quite stiff and stable I originally had 6 springs but got it down to 4 at the back and its still good - its a heavy duty truck so its stability will be better the more weight on it at the back I might not ever do a body for it - but a flat bed with hydraulic lifter and a cab stolen from a standard lego truck (there have been many) is very tempting (So far I am using all parts from 8421 exception of a few small parts and extra pair of tyres)

Thanks, I agree ackerman would be nice.... I might move the steering the other way around and have the arm control in the middle and the connection to the steering nearer the wheel as it fouls the tyre on full lock at the moment...

Rigged this up quickly to test some front suspension/steering solid axle to be as similar to real trucks as possible. I now understand why so many use 'normal' steering... took a while too to get the rear wheels parallel... Then coincidentally the lego MB Arocs 3245 came along and seems to have at last produced a truck with realisting live axles all around..... anyhow we will see how this progesses... its just a proof of concept at the moment - i'm no good at body work it drives quite well the rear axles are mirror images of eachother....

From the days when studless meant covering up your studs and not using modern lego... love that front axle...!

always called CV joints (found on cars front wheel drive) RZeppa joints...and lego ones universal joints: Named After Alfred Hans Rzeppa, (1885-1965) was an American engineer of Silesian descent working at Ford Motor Company who invented a version of constant-velocity joint in 1926. He proposed an improved design in 1936. Rzeppa's design uses six balls and an inner and outer race to provide almost constant velocity torque transfer regardless of the joint angle. The joint works in a similar manner to a bevel gear with the balls bisecting the joint angle and functioning as the "teeth" to transmit torque. A cardan joint is is more like the lego universal joint; Named after G. Cardano (1501-76), Italian mathematician, its inventor - "a universal joint consisting of a cross like piece, opposite ends of which rotate within the forked end of each of the two shafts connected." Interesting that the design and use of the cardan joint never changed much for 400 years - now Rzeppas are everywhere for driveshafts but still cardan joints are in use - hurray for italian engineering!

my 8421 is cowering in the corner....

very interested to see the steering mechanism in more detail - I am working on something similar - to make truck steering like the real thing so many MOCers just do not make the steering realistic like real trucks have, but it is hard because as you can see in the video the bump steer is ridiculous! probably corrects itself while driving with correct geometry for the money its a great set - but far too many nicer looking truck MOCs out there that I would 'borrow' designs from to improve this one but thats what lego want - something technical that you will make changes to... if it was too perfect ....

One article I remember reading was on the BBC, Brickset picked up on it... http://brickset.com/article/13166/has-the-imagination-disappeared-from-lego

so have diggers but you don't stop seeing plenty of MOCs of them bring it on...

lovely truck - getting a compact foldable/extendible crane on the back is probably going to take as long as the whole truck did

so what if they do not provide front suspension for a B-Model - like I said earlier - this is their intention - you immediately want to make up your own front suspension Remember LEGO have recently been criticised in the press for their press for the models being 'too complete' so that you just build them once and forget about them I reckon the B models at the lego design studio is probably out of this world but when it reaches production its 'dumbed' down a bit

Looking good it does look a little wide but it still looks fine - depends how you can trick the viewer with cleverly placed bodywork after perhaps invert the inner rear wheels so they go slightly over the hubs of the portal axles - that could get the wheels slightly closer together if you're not gearing it down then I don't see why you're using them in the first place but it does look good and its very interesting to see it used that way even the panhard rod

There have been many many lego forklifts both official and MOCs but this one has to be the best looking lego forklift ever! Love the LPG tank detail and the steering geometry is spot on

I think they do it on purpose - so you think to yourself "I could make a much better C model (D, E, or F)" if the A & B were superb - you'd hardly ever experiment with them and get bored

very cool - I have wrapped tracks like this to the outside of wheels before to make 'snow chains' sort of but hubless on its own - something light like a mars rover will keep these elliptical or round even but something heavy is going to require more than 4 wheels

they make great compressors

I think as the technic sets get simpler the normal sets get more complicated (e.g. the tumbler, benny's spaceship spaceship spaceship, etc....) for a 7-10 year old doing the same set in technic is a walk in the park compared to these

I assume the really old one is still ok ? got plenty of them....

we look forward to more photos indeed!

Not a technic set but we got this for my son recently '70165 Ultra Agents Mission HQ' and I was impressed that it came with : 2 x 5by7 Beam Frames 12 x Black Flatpanels and 6 x Silver metallic 11M Beams plus many other technic pieces (oh and 8 wheels)

Nice height adjustment but I think no one has come as close to the citroen hyrdraulic suspension height-correction but Sheepo's Peterbilt Truck: http://www.sheepo.es/2012/11/peterbilt-379-cat-c15.html

so much in such a little package!