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Subject: 
Shock Absorbers
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.technic
Date: 
Thu, 26 Sep 2002 00:07:29 GMT
Viewed: 
860 times
  
Hi everyone; it has been several months since I last posted here. I have
been very busy with real life matters and unfortunately had to take down my
Technic set review website due to a lack of time; perhaps I will able to
maintain it once again some day. I have not really been keeping track of the
Technic sets released for the last two years, so there are probably quite a
few sets and parts out there that I do not know about. Anything good been
released?

Anyway, I have been working on a custom Technic model (MOC) for the last
month (or actually the last several months, but I decided to restart from
scratch a month ago) and am trying to decide what kind of and how many shock
absorbers to use on the wheels. The finished model will be fairly heavy, so
I will need several shocks to hold it up, and I would like to get it right
this time since the shocks were one of the problems on the old version. The
chassis is that of a fairly standard six-wheeled truck; the four real wheels
will not be holding up a whole lot of weight and I can probably get away
with four shock absorbers per wheel there (two small, two large), but the
two wheels in the front will have a considerable amount of weight placed on
them and will likely require six or more per wheel. This is how the shocks
were arranged on the old version: (these pictures were taken a long time ago)

Front wheels: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=104964
Rear wheels: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=104966

This arrangement, while it worked well, could not possibly have sustained
the full weight of the model when completed. I will need to think up of a
new assembly for this newer version that is able to include more shocks
without taking up too much more space, or perhaps a simpler alternative
would be to use different kinds of shocks. I went to Bricklink and did a
search for "shock absorber" to see what kinds are out there and it came up
with quite a few I had not seen before. These are all the types I now know of:

Light gray small type 1 (8858, 8865, etc.)
Light gray small type 2 (8428, 8437, etc.)
Dark gray small (8448)
Yellow small (8458)
Red small
Blue small
Turquoise small
Teal small
Black large (8838, 8858, etc.)
Dark gray large (8880)
Yellow large (8466)

I have lots of the large black and large dark gray kinds, and these are the
main types I used on the old version of the truck, but the problem with
these is that they take up too much space and I can only put in a maximum of
four per wheel without having them interfere with the steering linkages. I
have a couple of the large yellow type as well but these do not seem to be
all that much tougher, and the few that I have are currently in use
elsewhere anyway. There are a lot of extra yellows available on Bricklink,
so I could probably obtain more of these easily, but are they any better
than the dark grays?

There are also a variety of the smaller shock absorbers that take up much
less space, and I have been able to put in five or six of these (along with
four large types) per wheel before without much trouble. I have several of
the light gray type 1's, but these are not quite stiff enough unless several
of them are used in parallel. There are also the marginally stronger light
gray type 2's and the dark grays that are still tougher, but I only have a
couple of these each. Then there are the small yellow type that are used in
the Silver Champion; as far as I know, these are by far the strongest type
around, offering over twice the stiffness of most other comparable kinds and
thus making them ideal for this project. (the size is also good) The problem
with these yellows is that I only have four of them from an SC set, and I
have looked for around everywhere on Brickbay and eBay for extras but with
no luck. (also, I don't want to disassemble the SC model just for them,
since I don't need anything else from that set)

As for the red, blue, turquoise and teal small types, I have not seen these
at all before, and I am guessing that they came out only recently. Does
anyone know how these perform relative to the more common types? Are they
simply colored versions of the light gray type 2 or do they actually give
different results in terms of functionality? (as the yellow ones do)

Also, on an unrelated note, I am thinking of trying to obtain one or two
Model Team sets to see what they are like (I don't have any at the moment);
are there any in particular that you guys would recommend?

Thanks,
-Gaurav



Message has 3 Replies:
  Re: Shock Absorbers
 
Have you taken a look at the 4X4 Off roader 8466? It has very heavy shocks. They are the same size as the large gray or dark grey shocks just with alot heaver spring and yellow in color. Lego had the 8466 on sell for $59.99 for a while (in the US). (...) (22 years ago, 26-Sep-02, to lugnet.technic)
  Re: Shock Absorbers
 
(...) These are, afaik, the same color: people differ on how to name what they see. Instead of adding more shocks, how about adding more suspension arm? There's a type which I *think* is called "walking beam", where the lower arm goes most of the (...) (22 years ago, 27-Sep-02, to lugnet.technic)
  Re: Shock Absorbers
 
(...) You could also experiment with a linkage, having the shocks elsewhere in the chassis like in the silver champ. This may reduce the space requirement around the steering area. ROSCO (22 years ago, 29-Sep-02, to lugnet.technic)

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