[VIDEO REVIEW] 42056 - Porsche 911 GT3 RS

[Tomahawker]

Thanks Paul for your very illuminating and honest review. I find it amusing to see these fawning reviews from the many “pretender” reviewers who received a free set from TLG. For myself, and I’m sure many true fans of Lego Technic, I only trust you and Jim to give honest, thorough, undistorted reviews of these flagship sets. It must be bitter medicine for TLG, who distributed so many review sets, to hear these negative comments, but it is also important that they understand that if they want to sell a premium product at a premium price, we will not accept mediocrity.

The good news, as your review highlights, is there are several very promising sets that appear to offer great functionality, good looks, and fair pricing just a few months away. I eagerly await your reviews of 42053, 42054, and 42055.

Edited June 1, 2016 by Tomahawker

[Erik Leppen]

Thanks for the review, Sariel. It's a great video showing perfectly all ins and outs of the set. Thanks!

But I have a few questions about your ratings. I mean, after a several-minutes-long discussion in the video and a discussion here in your post, about why this is one-third too expensive and should have costed about $200 instead, you rightly put "overpriced" as the first con. Then why does it get three stars for value-for-money, i.e. "average". Why? What should TLC do to make you give two or one stars on value-for-money?

Also in the comparison with other supercars you mistakenly put the 8448's gearbox as 4-gear. In fact it's 5 + R and, IMO, the most ingenious gearbox of that time.

PS Also I'm kinda surprised by your 5 stars for building experience. It means you found it a true joy to stack beams and panels for more than 60% of the build time. ;)

The set may disappoint many fans of true Technic, but your review is sublime. Thanks! And the biggest plus of the set is of course that its luggage compartment is the best fit for your hamster ever found in a Lego set :D

Edited June 1, 2016 by Erik Leppen

[Jay Psi]

Ah Sariel, where would AFOLs be without your acerbic wit and furry eye candy?! There's probably some bias in this comment because your opinion on the Porsche is very close to my own, but your review explained everything clearly and you presented your thoughts concisely.

I mean, after a several-minutes-long discussion in the video and a discussion here in your post, about why this is one-third too expensive and should have costed about $200 instead, you rightly put "overpriced" as the first con. Then why does it get three stars for value-for-money, i.e. "average". Why? What should TLC do to make you give two or one stars on value-for-money?

PS Also I'm kinda surprised by your 5 stars for building experience. It means you found it a true joy to stack beams and panels for more than 60% of the build time. ;)

The 3 stars for price has probably come from the segment near the end of the video where Blakbird says that in his opinion $300 is a decent price because it cost him more to build his supercar MOCs, all of which had fewer pieces, and most of them were 1:10 as opposed to 1:8.

On the other hand, I'm as confused about the 5-star building experience as you are! Jim talks about trying to capture the overall experience (from unboxing to building) in his review, so there may be a bit of this in the decision.

Edited June 1, 2016 by Jay Psi

[Sariel]

I gave it 3 stars for value because it does come with a bunch of new and unique pieces. I feel many of these are quite useful, the wheels will probably become a standard for custom supercars.

The building experience was excellent for me, entertaining and enriching. Both thumbs up here, as far as I'm concerned. A set with flawed functions can still be interesting and educational to build.

[roppie11]

So, the clue is, lego technic is nowadays about the looks and not about the functions (which you would expect from a TECHNIC(!!) set.

This is not entirely true, look at 42055 and more sets but it is true for the porsche and i don't like that. If i want something good looking i just go to a modelshop or whatever. It is a great parts pack nontheless

[DrJB]

I've been debating for a while whether this was a must-have yet, but with your honest review, I'll pass.

I hope though that TLG will take your bruising comments in full consideration and continue sending you sets for critical/comprehensive reviews.

[Meatman]

I had expected that there was all kinds of problems based off of what people were hinting over the past week, but you mean to tell me that there is a an error in the instructions? And Lego's own team of professionals didn't notice it? What an embarrassment.

[Vectormatic]

I had expected that there was all kinds of problems based off of what people were hinting over the past week, but you mean to tell me that there is a an error in the instructions? And Lego's own team of professionals didn't notice it? What an embarrassment.

It is a gear sequence issue, the gearbox still works just fine, and considering you cant see the pistons moving in the fan engine anyway, very few people will notice

But yeah, embarrassing is putting it mildly, spend 3 years on a set and your shift pattern in the gearbox is 1-3-2-4

[Didumos69]

The gearbox in Sariel's video is clearly suffering from resonance when driven by a motor. You can read this from the rotation speed of several gears which goes up and down with a more or less constant interval.

This is not strange given the number of gears involved, but as far as I can judge there is a more important cause to this effect.

In real gearboxes most gears have a prime number of teeth, or at least the numbers of teeth of two engaged gears are mutually prime. This takes away most of the resonance risk. It's also why most real gear ratios cannot be expressed in terms of whole numbers only. LEGO gears all have multitudes of 4 teeth, so two engaged gears are never mutually prime. Together with the large amounts of slack and friction - compared to real gearboxes - resonance is far more likely to occur.

Maybe we are setting the bar too high when we expect these kind of excessive gear sequences to behave well when being motorized.

Edited June 1, 2016 by Didumos69

[Appie]

Thanks Sariel, great review.

Your review provided one good reason to get this set though: the hamster under the hood is awesome. It's a perfect spot for such a little critter.

On a side note: I thought the 8448 was a 5+R speed gearbox and not a 4 speed, they re-used that gearbox for the 8466 even.

Edited June 1, 2016 by Appie

[Erik Leppen]

On a side note: I thought the 8448 was a 5+R speed gearbox and not a 4 speed

It is. 8448 has a 5+R, this is a mistake in the video/image.

[Rishab N]

Fantastic review Sariel. I can only repeat what others have said, but I appreciate your honesty. I think I'm going to pass on this set for now

[Meatman]

It is a gear sequence issue, the gearbox still works just fine, and considering you cant see the pistons moving in the fan engine anyway, very few people will notice

But yeah, embarrassing is putting it mildly, spend 3 years on a set and your shift pattern in the gearbox is 1-3-2-4

It doesn't look like it works fine in Sariel's video. In fact it looks like it is working horrible.

[Siegfried]

So the only real job for transmission is to change the frequency of the grinding sounds.

Yeah, covering up the engine is just silly. This could be the first flagship I've missed since 8070...

[Meatman]

I'll add this here too. Why would Lego not making the shift positions the same as the actual car it is based off of?

http://www.automobilemag.com/news/2016-porsche-911-gt3-rs-review/#2016-porsche-911-gt3-rs-shifter-01

[suffocation]

In real gearboxes most gears have a prime number of teeth, or at least the numbers of teeth of two engaged gears are mutually prime. This takes away most of the resonance risk. It's also why most real gear ratios cannot be expressed in terms of whole numbers only. LEGO gears all have multitudes of 4 teeth, so two engaged gears are never mutually prime. Together with the large amounts of slack and friction - compared to real gearboxes - resonance is far more likely to occur.

Off-topic, but I really want to thank you for sharing this tidbit. This is the kind of info that sends Lego-loving humanities buffs like me into raptures.

[JGW3000]

Great, I learned something today - gears with prime number of teeth - actually makes sense to avoid those nasty harmonics. And may come in useful some day on some of our designs in which vibration can be an issue...

[Didumos69]

Off-topic, but I really want to thank you for sharing this tidbit. This is the kind of info that sends Lego-loving humanities buffs like me into raptures.

Great, I learned something today - gears with prime number of teeth - actually makes sense to avoid those nasty harmonics. And may come in useful some day on some of our designs in which vibration can be an issue...

You're welcome! Btw, using gears with prime number of teeth is a bit too strict, for avoiding resonance it is enough to make sure the numbers of teeth of each pair of engaged gears do not share a common divider other then '1' (iow, the numbers need to be 'mutually prime').

Edited June 2, 2016 by Didumos69

[Lipko]

In practice (and I guess in not so high-performance situations), you are okay if you add/subtract 1 teeth from the calculated teeth number (this means that the gear ratio will be a little off).

[Didumos69]

In practice (and I guess in not so high-performance situations), you are okay if you add/subtract 1 teeth from the calculated teeth number (this means that the gear ratio will be a little off).

...which works out especially well when calculating with multitudes of 6, as adding/subtracting 1 gives many prime numbers:

5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 25, 29, 31, 35, 37, 41, 43, 47, all prime numbers except for 25 and 35...

Edited June 2, 2016 by Didumos69

[captainmib]

Thanks for a great review.

Pointing to the flaws in the design really made up my mind

I'm not going to get it now, only if it will drop in price. (wont expect that).

I really like the looks of this model, but the price is so high.

And the most important thing, there is just nothing new in the technic department.

A must for a ultimate technic car.

Im actually amazed by myself i can say this.

Im out.

[roppie11]

It is a gear sequence issue, the gearbox still works just fine, and considering you cant see the pistons moving in the fan engine anyway, very few people will notice

But yeah, embarrassing is putting it mildly, spend 3 years on a set and your shift pattern in the gearbox is 1-3-2-4

just made me wondering, what is the point of the whole gearbox, you can't even see the pistons moving. As someone said, it changes only the freqency of the grinding.

[Appie]

It is. 8448 has a 5+R, this is a mistake in the video/image.

Sorry, just noticed you already mentioned this in your last post in this topic.

[MacKaiwer]

Nice video review again Sariel, thank you It is a shame that this set has 300 euros price tag... It would have been a great parts donor package with 200 euros price tag... Now I must seriously think is it worth it... Maybe I repair my real life car (not Porsche) with 300 euros and leave this set on the shop shelf...

Edited June 2, 2016 by MacKaiwer

[ctx1769]

Excellent review Sariel, shame on you TLG tut tut tut.