Instructions for my Excavator

[Blakbird]

For anyone who may have doubted what a global hobby LEGO Technic is and what a global reach Eurobricks has, I thought I would present the following chart that I put together. This shows the distribution of all the instructions sold to date by country, and the globe is pretty well represented! Still not much from Asia and nothing from South America, but I was inspired by how much a design can span the globe with little more publicity than this Eurobricks thread.

[timslegos]

I am really surprised at the number of US buys. Great chart.

tim

[Meatman]

Eric, do you know what country most of the Vampire GT instructions went?

[Blakbird]

Eric, do you know what country most of the Vampire GT instructions went?

That question belongs in a different thread, but I don't know the answer. You'd have to ask Paul since he handles those.

[EdmanZA]

I've started Bricklinking my parts for this build - always a 'fun' exercise when shipping costs to the southern tip of Africa make it imperative to consolidate parts into as few orders as possible.

Those black 40T gears are rarer than hen's teeth. I'm going to have to go for grey ones. Painting them won't work, I think, but does anyone have any experience trying to dye grey parts to black?

[Blakbird]

Those black 40T gears are rarer than hen's teeth. I'm going to have to go for grey ones. Painting them won't work, I think, but does anyone have any experience trying to dye grey parts to black?

Yes! It works great if the part in question happens to be made of the right plastic, and not at all if it isn't. For example, axles dye wonderfully, but axle pins do not. I don't know which material the gears are, so I can't predict whether it would work or not. The model would look OK with grey though.

[davidmull]

Really nice model even tho I do prefer RC, has this model many parts in total? It really is a masterpiece too look at :)

Longer pneumatics would really benefit models like this and were looking at the present cylinders way too long now so come on lego make longer ones!

I'm currently building jurgen s ultimate 8043 hope it's worth it too :)

[Blakbird]

Really nice model even tho I do prefer RC, has this model many parts in total? It really is a masterpiece too look at :)

About 1700 parts.

For those of you thinking about making this model, EdmanZA has made a very detailed post in another thread discussing the process of acquiring the parts, how much they cost, and how easy or hard they were to find.

Edited January 24, 2013 by Blakbird

[nychase]

So, even though I have the worlds supply of Black 40t Gears there are currently more than enough on BL for someone in the US to get a proper look. Thats correct, despite my love affair with them I have held off snapping them all up so that someone else could have a complete JS220.

Enjoy!

[EdmanZA]

I made up a BOM for all the hose lengths that I counted and used a conversion of 1LU = 8mm, but I may well have missed something:

https://docs.google....MUtMZk9PcjBJcHc

Seems I made a bit of a mistake and left out a couple of yellow hose. I've now updated the list.

A question for Blakbird or anyone else who's built this:

On p81 of the instruction, a 0.5L piece of dark gray rigid hose is placed in one end of a 180° angled connector. It seems to be used as some kind of internal spacer (the axle it connects to only sticks out by 0.5L) and I was wondering if it's really necessary?

[Blakbird]

A question for Blakbird or anyone else who's built this:

On p81 of the instruction, a 0.5L piece of dark gray rigid hose is placed in one end of a 180° angled connector. It seems to be used as some kind of internal spacer (the axle it connects to only sticks out by 0.5L) and I was wondering if it's really necessary?

Yes! The first time I built it I left it out, but the axle attached to the connector which drives the bevel gear in the gearbox backed out after a while and disabled the tracks on one side. The 0.5L hose prevents that from happening. Once that gear comes loose, I had to tear almost the whole superstructure apart to fix it.

[DarkShadow73]

You don't have to pump any air pump with this model. It has an automatic compressor that produces air pressure when needed and shuts down when not needed. It runs off the same batteries as the rest of the model. And of course real excavators do the same thing. The engine doesn't actually power the excavator directly, it runs a pair of hydraulic pumps that produce pressure on demand including to rotary motors propelling the base.

Very nice system. I know the 8049 Log Loader had a similar compressor like system. Crappy model IMO, but the fact that it had a powered pneumatics was nice, too bad that was the last one produced by Lego that had that setup. Don't know why they would make a medium sized model with that feature, but not continue with it. One that really needed it was the Unimog and alternate model plow of that set.

[Rijkvv]

(bump)

As a fan of the old studded approach I had to buy instructions for this. I didn't immediately collect the parts needed, but every now and then I took a look at Bricklink to see if there was a shop that had more than a few of the rare black 40t gears to offer. About a month ago I found a shop that had eight of them, and I realized this would be the best opportunity if I ever wanted to build the model. It turned out to be the shop of Jennifer herself, and as a result I could reduce the number of necessary orders to a few.

Yesterday was a rainy day, the perfect weather to build LEGO. So I took a start, and this is the result so far:

What I like about the building process is that a fair number of parts is included in every step, just like how I remember it from the official TECHNIC sets from the 90s.

Edited October 12, 2013 by Richie

[jantjeuh]

This beauty is on my to-build list as well. A few bricklink orders to go first though, need a lot more pneumatic tubing and studfull bricks.

[Jennifer Clark]

Good luck Richie, I'm really looking forward to seeing your progress with this!

I think it's quite poetic that many of the parts will be from the original :-)

Jennifer

[Rijkvv]

Aaand it's finished:

I had the intention to make some more pictures during the building progress, but couldn't stop building.

Wow. The most complicated official sets are reduced to simple starter sets by this creation. I checked the drivelines if everything moved well, but I couldn't check the pneumatic connections since the remote wasn't finished. And if I had to change something underneath... But now everything works as it should.

Connecting the flex tube to the slopes and hinge, at the driver's cabin, was a pain in the a**, but it's fixed now.

The connections at the controller were not immediately clear to me. By try and error, or what's it called, I managed to fix the pneumatic tubes to the right connectors (due to the complexity inside the model, I only labeled them 1-6, not functions) and then the electric cable from the battery box was left. I couldn't figure out where it was meant to go, but it works where I put it (on top of the white electric plate, as can be seen in the first picture).

however I found a great tool for cutting small diameter tube (...) http://uk.rs-online....=PSF_428494|alt

Thanks for the tip. I used a similar tool, it was really useful.

Many thanks to Jennifer and Eric. This thing is marvellous, both in terms of functions and looks.

[Blakbird]

I have a file for the stickers if you are interested. I never got around to posting it with the instructions.

[jantjeuh]

Damn, I just noticed those are old-style (studded) pneumatic rams that the model uses. That makes it cost-prohibitive for me to build it Or is there an easy way to substitute them with newer (rounded) cylinders?

[Jennifer Clark]

Damn, I just noticed those are old-style (studded) pneumatic rams that the model uses. That makes it cost-prohibitive for me to build it Or is there an easy way to substitute them with newer (rounded) cylinders?

I used these to make joining two cylinders end to end easier. But after this the part that joins two rounded cylinders became available, so I imagine this would work well.

The part I'm thinking of is the one that joins the two cylinders in the 8421 crane.

Jennifer

Aaand it's finished:

Many thanks to Jennifer and Eric. This thing is marvellous, both in terms of functions and looks.

Wow indeed! It's something really special to see that model again :-)

Jennifer

[Junpei]

I used these to make joining two cylinders end to end easier. But after this the part that joins two rounded cylinders became available, so I imagine this would work well.

The part I'm thinking of is the one that joins the two cylinders in the 8421 crane.

Jennifer

Those brackets cost four times as much as 2 studded cylinders...

Also, it would be about 2-3 studs shorter if you were to use new cylinders with brackets.

[Jennifer Clark]

Those brackets cost four times as much as 2 studded cylinders...

Good point! If you already own them it would be ok though :-)

Also, it would be about 2-3 studs shorter if you were to use new cylinders with brackets.

Should be easy enough to compensate for this on the dipper and bucket cylinders by extending the mountpoints at the base of the cylinder with liftarms, e.g. 1x3.

For the boom, the short length could actually be an advantage as the top of the cylinders would not have to be mounted "inside" the boom.

Jennifer

[jantjeuh]

I have four of those brackets, seems like I need four more then. The prices are insane at the moment though...

Edited October 19, 2013 by jantjeuh

[Jennifer Clark]

The four cylinders for the boom are joined together, so would it be possible to join them with only two of the brackets on the outside of the combined four cylinders?

That way you would only need an extra two.

Or you could always buy four studded cylinders for the boom, and have rounded ones for the rest :-)

Jennifer

[Alasdair Ryan]

I am lucky I have 4 sets of those brackets,they are good for making pneumatic support legs.

Edited October 19, 2013 by Alasdair Ryan

[Junpei]

That's 4 more sets than I have.

I hope TLG puts them in another set.