42146 - Liebherr LR13000

[HydroWorld Outlook]

With the final model now revealed, I can now safely say that this set appears to be a mix of both good news and bad news. The good news is, the price seems to have gone down a bit for the same amount of pieces, which means the part value of the set increases and we may no longer have to pay that ridiculous $700 price tag that was rumored previously (even though we cannot be exactly sure of this yet—hopefully I am correct on this). The other good news is that we're getting all those new frame and counterweight pieces, which may find useful applications in MOCs after the set's official release. 

The bad news is that we're not getting those 7L tracks in a neutral color yet after all, because the pictures make it obvious that TLG has decided to use the plain old 5L-wide tracks, which is fine but definitely raises my concern of the model's stability considering its massive height. Additionally, as Unbrickme has pointed out, there will be no gearbox in this set (like the disappointingly basic 42100 set), and as a consequence we can expect less mechanical complexity for the already steep price that we will be paying to buy this set ($550). In the 42131 set, we had less motors but we also had a gearbox, allowing a greater number of mechanical functions for a lower price ($450), so this set does look like a step backward when taken from an engineering perspective.

But I suppose we'll see how well this set performs when it hits shelves in the next few months.

Edited June 28, 2023 by HydroWorld Outlook

[R0Sch]

45 minutes ago, HydroWorld Outlook said:

The bad news is that we're not getting those 7L tracks in a neutral color yet after all, because the pictures make it obvious that TLG has decided to use the plain old 5L-wide tracks, which is fine but definitely raises my concern of the model's stability considering its massive height.

The 7L softer tracks would not hold the weight of this fat ugly duckling. They would just deform and make the parts useless afterwards. Therefore the hard plastic 5L tracks had to be used.

Price is still too high for such an unimpressive height. I expected at least 1.5m boom. But guess TLG had bigger concerns over the lawsuits in case it fell on a child than to make an actual LR 13000. Might as well called it a no-name crawler crane and lower the price much more, because this chimera will do nobody justice.

Edited June 28, 2023 by R0Sch

[Addi498]

The hook block is a joke. A crane of this calibre should really have 3 pulleys or 6 parts of line at the bare minimum. For perspective, the largest hook block (>3000t) shown in the official load chart of the crane has 30 pulleys or 60 parts of line.

[1gor]

20 minutes ago, R0Sch said:

 But guess TLG had bigger concerns over the lawsuits in case it fell on a child than to make an actual LR 13000. Might as well called it a no-name crawler crane and lower the price much more, because this chimera will do nobody justice.

That could be the case (lawsuits). Perhaps license was mandatory before they realise size problem..

 

[nerdsforprez]

2 minutes ago, 1gor said:

That could be the case (lawsuits). Perhaps license was mandatory before they realise size problem..

 

I anticipated as much in the past.  But in that case the onus still falls on TLG.  How obvious a concern this is.  Something that should have been pointed out right at the beginning.  I am not really faulting TLG so much on the end result of this model as much as I am the CHOICE to even select it in the first place.  With their uber concerns regarding lawsuits, the undeniable calls that will be made claiming "my set does not have xx of the new frame pieces", etc. this model choice was perhaps wrong in the first place, at least at this scale.  

 

5 hours ago, Oh_Hi_Mao said:

Few let downs: price (I'll wait for a discount, 500 EUR is max what I am willing to pay). Tracks were not being used from 41131. It does not look like LR13000 but perhaps it is a compromise to have this set safe. 

I don't care about the length of booms, it can be easily extended (it is still LEGO at the end of the day). 

I see these statements as inconsistent.  Complain about the price but then advocate for increasing the size by buying more of the new frame pieces.  For anyone who thinks this my money is on these new frame pieces, from Bricks and Pieces, will be VERY expensive.  

 

This will increase the price much, much more.  And mind you, one is not increasing the size to make it larger than scaling would suggest for this model, one would have to increase the boom size ALOT to JUST GET IT TO SCALE.  

[Jockos]

I have a feeling the boom will/can be extendable easily, either out of the box or after buying some parts, as in one of the pictures when the red 5x7 frames are visible, they are held just by 4 3L pins with bushes.. a similar method like in 42042

[Oh_Hi_Mao]

5 minutes ago, nerdsforprez said:

 

I see these statements as inconsistent.  Complain about the price but then advocate for increasing the size by buying more of the new frame pieces.  For anyone who thinks this my money is on these new frame pieces, from Bricks and Pieces, will be VERY expensive.  

 

This will increase the price much, much more.  And mind you, one is not increasing the size to make it larger than scaling would suggest for this model, one would have to increase the boom size ALOT to JUST GET IT TO SCALE.  

You missed the point. I'll wait for discount. Saved money could be (but it doesn't mean will be) spent on additional parts to extend boom (if it will be needed). At the end of the day, I should get more for the same initial price. If Crane would be 1,5 meters high from day one I perhaps would consider to pay the actual price on 1st of August. But we all know why LEGO settled  with 1 meter height of a crene. 

[1gor]

@nerdsforprez it was just my guess, you could be right, but let's look that way vrane fanx will buy it if (or when) price would be acceptable. For me only interesting thing is this 7 x 19? frame (if it appears in black). So I welcome this set as particular introduction of new an (in my case) highly usefull part

[Oh_Hi_Mao]

Interesting. French eshop "cdiscount", from which the most recent leak originated, removed 42146 from its website. Now page results in 404 not found. 

[M_longer]

Pictures of this set are floating around, but here's few of my thoughts about it.

Price.
Or should I say PRICE. 23,5 eurocents per piece is something that we did not encountered in Technic before. 42131, which has one thousand pieces more and costs "only" 500€ and has 0,13c per piece is considered as too expensive.
So what can I say about price of this set? Outrageously priced?
You can have two large Technic sets for that money, or few mid sized ones.

Control+
It seems that it will have same double-HUB setup as 42100, with one hub placed in undercarriage, for driving and rotation of the superstructure, and second on the superstructure, powering 3 other motors, which should run the main arm, derrick and winch.

Size.
I know, building and playing with large models is fun. But from my perspective, a man who likes his models dust free storing previously mentioned CAT bulldozer is a bit tricky due to its size. I wonder how many people will be able to display this set fully erected. 42042 offered similiar functions in much smaller package.

Pieces.
As we can see, there's a lot of new truss pieces. "A" ones are known from 42157 and Ninjago Gardens. The new square ones look like another enormous addition to Technic frames line. They might be useful, but I need to have them in hand to be sure. Counterweight pieces also look interesting. And there are two shock absorbers from 42130 too!
With probably 6 motors and two hubs I might be able to do rebuild it into something cool, but not for THAT PRICE.

Eh.

Edited June 28, 2023 by M_longer

[kbalage]

2 hours ago, Unbrickme said:

n this case it actually says "retired product" like on all discontinued sets. It's never coming back. When the error of taking it off the website, and returning happened, it never said "retired product." I'm guessting it's retired because that XL motor literally had the same torque as the L motor, and was identical in almost every way except for the form factor. Supposedly it could handle slightly more load before its power was cut by the hub, but it was never worth it to use in your own creations.

This is not true. There have been several scenarios where sets that have been out of stock for an extended period of time, or updated for some reason, have shown up on lego.com as retired. I wouldn't expect any hardware updates for the motors, they might get a new ID for some internal reason, but I highly doubt they're really retired or being updated.

In the case of the XL motor, it's totally alive on the Australian LEGO site for example. 

[JaBaCaDaBra]

50 minutes ago, nerdsforprez said:

41131

An adventcalendar with tracks,
Now that will be a very intresting moc

[gyenesvi]

29 minutes ago, kbalage said:

There have been several scenarios where sets that have been out of stock for an extended period of time, or updated for some reason, have shown up on lego.com as retired.

In the case of the XL motor, it's totally alive on the Australian LEGO site for example.

That's what I was afraid of..

[howitzer]

There's at least 20 of those new frame pieces in the booms, and at least 14 of the A-frames, both of which are going to be pretty expensive in PaB. My guess is that something like 100€ of the price can be attributed to these two parts alone.

Still really expensive though.

Edited June 28, 2023 by howitzer

[Zerobricks]

Maybe the PU XL motor is also getting a CE symbol, hence new ID and old one retiring.

Anyway back to the set, I think the counterweights increase the price a lot, especially if you take in account that price per gram is more reflective of true value. 

[nerdsforprez]

1 hour ago, M_longer said:

The new square ones look like another enormous addition to Technic frames line. They might be useful, but I need to have them in hand to be sure.

I know I have said this before, but yes, we need to see them in hand.  The hypotenuse section of the frame piece looks very thin.  Questionable strength.  The one thing this set was banking on was the ABS used for these frame pieces, and at least from the visual it appears they went skimpy EVEN ON THESE... 

[Aleh]

7 hours ago, Frequenzberater said:

Proportions are exactly like in the leaked picture. 

And there have nothing common with Liebherr LR13000, even talking about only chassis

[BusterHaus]

8 minutes ago, nerdsforprez said:

I know I have said this before, but yes, we need to see them in hand.  The hypotenuse section of the frame piece looks very thin.  Questionable strength.  The one thing this set was banking on was the ABS used for these frame pieces, and at least from the visual it appears they went skimpy EVEN ON THESE...  

 

Keep in mind that thicker parts would weigh more, erasing the advantage of their additional strength. They probably found a sweet spot between the strength of the parts, their weight and the size of the crane. 

[Aleh]

4 hours ago, Jeroen Ottens said:

Is there a big gearrack in the back that is connected at the bottom of  the links that connect to the top of the rear boom? The links that are just in front of the bigger links going to the counterweight.

If so, it can be used to adjust the angle of the rear boom, but that will also change the height of the counterweights…

Hard to say based on these images, but the connection between derrek boom and rear counterweight is unadjastable, so the boom may be adjusted by height only together with the counterweight, imo

[J159753]

Back in Jan 2022 this was expected to have be 150cm tall and 2882 pieces. A year and a half later it's only 100cm tall - but 2883 pieces. It seems unlikely that the set would be comprehensively redesigned and shrunk, but end up with an essentially identical piece count. It's not as if there are many obviously 'optional' pieces bulking out the 100cm version.

Did they JUST remove 50cm worth of trusses, and quietly bulk it out a bit?

Edited June 28, 2023 by J159753

[M_longer]

38 minutes ago, Aleh said:

even talking about only chassis

We are talking bout 42131 again? :P

[R0Sch]

Did anyone notice the whole rear superstructure and weights are supported by 2 thin beams (probably manually lowered), meaning the crane will not move/rotate while extending the boom. The derrick weights are supposed to touch the ground when the boom is lowered but the turntable ballast enables free movement/rotation ans supposed to balance a raised boom on it's own.

[gyenesvi]

20 minutes ago, J159753 said:

Back in Jan 2022 this was expected to have be 150cm tall and 2882 pieces. A year and a half later it's only 100cm tall - but 2883 pieces. It seems unlikely that the set would be comprehensively redesigned and shrunk, but end up with an essentially identical piece count. It's not as if there are many obviously 'optional' pieces bulking out the 100cm version.

Did they JUST remove 50cm worth of trusses, and quietly bulk it out a bit?

It was rumoured, not expected. Big difference. And we'll never know if the rumours were true or not. You say as well that it's unlikely. People just keep saying that the set was down-sized. We will never know if that's the case, or it was designed this way from the start. So there's no point in ranting about something that might have just been the fantasy of some blogger.

[Unbrickme]

1 hour ago, Zerobricks said:

Maybe the PU XL motor is also getting a CE symbol, hence new ID and old one retiring.

Anyway back to the set, I think the counterweights increase the price a lot, especially if you take in account that price per gram is more reflective of true value. 

But the L motor just got updated with the CЄ logo and yet it was never removed from LEGO’s website

[aminnich]

38 minutes ago, J159753 said:

Back in Jan 2022 this was expected to have be 150cm tall and 2882 pieces. A year and a half later it's only 100cm tall - but 2883 pieces. It seems unlikely that the set would be comprehensively redesigned and shrunk, but end up with an essentially identical piece count. It's not as if there are many obviously 'optional' pieces bulking out the 100cm version.

Did they JUST remove 50cm worth of trusses, and quietly bulk it out a bit?

This or the boom pieces themselves were shortened to reduce the overall height. I find this more likely than increasing the number of pieces in the superstructure.