Lego WANT of the Day

20180811_193632 by Jon Swift[/url], on Flickr

20190918_172523 by Jon Swift[/url], on Flickr

Got started on this one this evening! “It’s not a toy, it’s a Christmas decoration”.

Got started on this one this evening! “It’s not a toy, it’s a Christmas decoration”.

I bought a cat-food advent calendar this afternoon at Lidl; you can definitely get away with that 🙂

pdw jr has declared that he wants a Lego monster truck for Christmas. For various reasons, not least that he’s too young to have a phone to control it, he’s not getting 42099. So instead he’s getting this:

It’s this MOC from rebrickable that only has a PDF with photo instructions, so I’ve had a lot of fun recreating it in Lego Studio, converting it to his favourite colours, making a few minor changes, and producing a full set of personalised instructions.

Unfortunately, it turns out that 14L yellow soft axles were seen in exactly one set back in 1999, and there’s only 2.5 available in the country, so I have a little tweak planned for that.

Looks good. Sweajnr (6) also wants 40299 and having seen his attempts to control even a cheap Walmart special RC truck it’s not high up my list. Is that one still remote control?

@stumpyjon – Do you plan these builds out using Studio or similar or just start building? I wouldn’t even know where to start….

Yeah, still RC, but built around the Power Functions IR stuff which we’ve got loads of already. It looked like quite an economical option, although converting it to red and yellow has jacked the price up a bit.

The reviews of 42099 seemed a bit mixed anyway.

Just start building, the big base started off as a landing pad and grew over about 2 years. The big Star Destroyer was a straight build over 2 months. Had time on my hands, now I’m working again I’m struggling to find the energy to start something. Its a bit like going for a ride, getting started is the hardest bit.

This move to having everything controlled through smartphones is a bit limiting for smaller children. I’ve seen rumors of an RC type car next year and I’m hoping that it’s got a “normal control”. I investigated buzzwhiz but those are both expensive and also app controlled. We don’t have any power functions stuff to fall back on.

Yeah, agreed on the app controlled thing. And touchscreens just aren’t as good for controls anyway.

Argos have got the Tracked Racer in their Black Friday sale, although stock is pretty low:

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8722823

This move to having everything controlled through smartphones is a bit limiting for smaller children.

old/secondhand phone or tablet running in kiosk mode? Yes it’s maybe an added cost/complexity but the Lego apps are really well done & a lot of fun, a massive step up from the old controllers. The inverse kinematics (think that’s what it’s called!!) on the big digger are brilliant.

I’ve seen a few reviews of that tracked racer implying it’s really tricky to control otherwise I’d have already pulled the trigger.

I think the old phone / tablet is the way forward but it’d be my luck that it won’t have the right bluetooth protocol.

Yeah, it is a bit crazy, and will only do wheelies going forwards, but the fact that it can do crazy spins on the spot keeps the kids entertained.

It’s really annoying that they never did an analogue IR controller other than the train one. I’ve tried putting an SBrick on the tracked racer and it’s so much better with proportional control, even on a phone touchscreen.

The Buwizz app links up fairly well with a bluetooth gamepad. I’ve been using an 8bitDo SN30 to donut the 42077 rally car around, it works fairly well, though obviously another potentially faffy step for kids.

Been keen to build something tracked racer like out of parts.

@stumpyjon I have one question:

How do you dust that lot? It’s all I can do to stop a nice smooth Saturn V turning grey, my older model parts are more lint than brick.

@Cougar I periodically take them apart and soak the pieces in hand washing powder and hot water. I do the same for any ebay purchases, the colour of the water can be quite disgusting afterwards. UV is the biggest danger though, the fire retardant bromides in the plastic turn them brown after continued exposure. It can be reversed with hydrogen peroxide catalused with so pay clean powder and a UV light source. Its called the retrobrite process, it was invented by someone who collects old IT equipment.

Aye, I’m familiar with Retr0bright, I have an ST and an Amiga in a cupboard here. There’s questions around its long-term viability which I need to do more legwork on before I go down that road though.

I was meaning more just day-to-day maintenance. You can’t seriously just let that lot get grubby then strip it, wash and rebuild? Can you?

Occaisional hoover, but yes, part of the funmis the chance to rebuild.

It’s really annoying that they never did an analogue IR controller other than the train one.

@pdw what about the 8885 one? https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/lego-power-functions-ir-remote-control-8885 Or do you mean with proper control rather than the on off?

I’ve been meaning to try and make a train controller work as a limited proportional controller for the tracked racer. Would make it easier to control. Also need to get around to removing the current limitation from one of my battery boxes. I’ve a 2xL motor driven technic rally car (the blue red and white one) with 2 V2 IR receivers that needs more juice to the motors.

The tracked racer is great. for £43 its a bargain

Its got gearing between the motors and the tracks so you can adjust the ratios to give you less torque but more speed.

If you want to make it really mental you can swap the tracks for wheels!

8885 is just on-off.

The train controller is proportional, but useless for most things because it doesn’t return to centre and because of the way it uses the IR protocol, “centre” keeps moving. Whenever you turn the wheel, it sends a “go a bit faster” or “go a bit slower” message rather than “go at speed X”. This means that if the receiver misses a message, the zero point wanders around. So even if you were to figure out a way to make the dials spring loaded, it’d still be useless.

I’m pretty sure that I read that the receivers support a “go at speed X” message, so it’s a shame that Lego never released a controller that used it.

The tracked racer works really well with proportional control because you can choose whether to do a wheelie or not, and by putting one control forward and one almost all the way back you can do a really fast wheelie spin (well, it amused father and son for longer than it should have done)

I didn’t know the battery boxes had a current limitation. I thought it was all in the receivers.

Sadly yes current limitation in both receiver and batteries. It is easy to bypass in the battery box and I have one which the switch only works one way on as a suitable victim :D. I have had the model working with two batteries but there isn’t really room for them, and iirc it still tripped the limiters.

Has anyone bought and built the Mandolorians ship yet?

Any good?

As much as I love Lego I get the feeling that if you want a decent RC car then you’re better off going and buying a decent RC car!!

Agreed – Lego RC vehicles won’t match dedicated RC cars but I like to be able to design and make a car myself, then when I realise it’s rubbish tear it apart and make something completely different.

zilog6128
Full Member

As much as I love Lego I get the feeling that if you want a decent RC car then you’re better off going and buying a decent RC car!!

Oh absolutely. Even a lego body on a proper RC car chassis will be terribly topheavy (I’m doing this myself for lolz but I’m realistic, it’ll fall over all the time, I may actually have to commit the terrible sin of gluing the lego together to make it not just explode).

But sometimes having a good RC car is good, while other times having lego is good

Noooo step away from the kragle.
I have the technics rally car and it is ok for our 5 year old, but a said no comparison with the cheapie ftx colt he plays with. Am awful lot safer for everyone though

Has anyone bought and built the Mandolorians ship yet?

Any good?

Whilst we don’t have it, me and the lad watch a few Lego Star wars you tube vids and the razorcrest is a highly rated set.

Dodgy?
I’ve never heard of ApricotPenguin, but the old adage of ‘if it’s too good to be true it usually is’ holds firm here, I suspect.

Mobile phone number for contact, looks like a residential address, “millions of customers” but no sign of a company or VAT registration number. Apparently UK-based, but the Ts&Cs say prices are based in US dollars, “several decades of successful operation”, but domain only registered in Sept 2020.

Seems legit.

Dodgy?

Dodgier than a dodgeball team from Dodge City.

Domain registered in September for one year. The address at the bottom is a residential property here and the “about us” page appears to have been lifted from a fashion website.

I agree that if you want something that’s fun to drive, then a proper RC car will be better (although the tracked racer is entertaining in it’s own way).

It’s a bit of a shame that Lego don’t do a bit more in this area, as there are people building half-decent RC Lego stuff, but it’s reliant on a handful of 3rd party/discontinued bits that makes it very expensive (Buiwizz, buggy motors).

I think there’s a lot of fun learning to be had experimenting with different designs and whilst it may never matched a “proper” RC car, I think Lego could get an awful lot closer without that much effort.

Hmmm, as I suspected. I went through the motions of adding to basket and then getting to the payment page, and that took me to a completely different business, that it looked like they’d hacked into.
Dodge City indeed!

I went through the motions of adding to basket and then getting to the payment page

seriously, if you actually went that far, you need to step away from the internet until you can be supervised by a responsible adult 🤣

you need to step away from the internet

It was just a test, honest! 😉

[steps away from the internet, looks round for a grown up]

decent price for the Ducati model at Amazon Fr, very tempted despite not really being into Technic any more, it looks so damn cool!

(possibility of further reduction if you use/abuse the Kids Wish List thing, might be best to save that for something more expensive though for a bigger discount!!)

Couple of new arrivals at astrobricks, a pretty reliable knockoff blocks supplier- they do some copy kits but a lot of MOCS.

I like this:
https://www.astrobricks.com/products/rebel-tow-truck

But I think STW would prefer this:
https://preview.redd.it/h1jol5pucz261.jpg?width=409&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=522217928af8149f41dc65714d325a632f9c9c28

AliExpress TIE Fighter and Ferrari Enzo have arrived, X Wing is in transit.

That’ll keep me busy over Christmas.

I feel bad.

HTS and so you should.

Just embarking on building this.

4400 pieces, got 75% of the pieces from my stock, about to source the rest via EBay and Brick Owl, etc. Weirdly I enjoy sourcing the parts as much as the build. Seems I’m not alone. Should be a nice edition to the fleet.

Fight me. 😉

Got an absolutely huge amount of pukka Lego.

Oh you do not want to take that bet, mine weighs so much it bent 18mm ply. 😉

20200916_122330[1]

That’s just the loose stuff, the lads Lego and my UCS is in the house. Not a scrap of fake amongst it.