42083 - Technic Bugatti Chiron

[Royalridge]

42083 - Technic Bugatti Chiron

My set had a bit of a journey.  I'd ordered it from Amazon when I saw it at a fairly low price (well, low in context here was just just over £300, compared to the official UK price of £330), plus I had a load of Amazon vouchers from the company to use. Turns out I'd actually ordered from Germany, even though it was "Fulfilled By Amazon" it turns out it wasn't stocked.  So when it was ordered on the 2nd of September it was sent from the German store to Amazon's warehouse in Germany, then through Amazon's internal supply chain to the UK, where it was sent to Ireland.  It also spent a couple of days awaiting custom clearence.  The arrival date slipped, and slipped until it was estimated as 12th/13th September.  Nice, I've a weekend I'm on-call for work so I've that free to build it.  A nice leisurly build.  Wednesday, nothing.  Thursday, nothing.  Friday nothing.

In the meantime I had the Porsche 911 that's I'd got the good deal on in Argos sitting there, so Friday evening I started on that, finishing it over the weekend, something like 1am Monday morning. 

So the Chiron finally arrived on Monday 17th, taking a guess that it would be a similar build time to the Porsche gave me a ~12 hour build time.  Yeah, I'm not the fastest Technic assembler.  So with the LUG.IE exhibition in Blanchardstown library on Friday 21st it was going to be tight to have Project Super Secret Squirrel on display.  Although I'm sure a few had guessed I'd be getting it at some point.

Monday, was 3 hours of building.
Tuesday, zero (had a couple of things on).  Tuesday is also when I realised that Thursday was a company night out to celebrate my years of service.  So couldn't ditch that!
Wednesday, 3 hours more, and considered myself half way there, as I'd completed book 1 of 2
Thursday, zero building, a lot of steak, and beer, and wine.
Friday!  Show Day!  Fortunately a while ago I'd booked the whole day off work to have a relaxing day to just chill before going up to the library.  So I decide I'll press on with it a bit and see how it goes, worst case it can be a "build in progress" shown off anyway.  Start off with a slight hangover and coffee at 9am.  Get cracking through and it's taking shape.  To the point that I'm setting deadlines like stop at 3:30 to have time for the other stuff.

3:30 comes and I figure there's an hour left in the build.  So I'm going to push on through to the end.  Then comes the last box.  Which in the Porsche had just the wheel rims and tyres.  But nope, in the Bugatti it still has some bodywork elements to do.  Finally click the last piece in and then pack the car, grab the Bugatti and head up.

It's only when I get to the show and get a look at it that I realise the "working" rear wing isn't working.  It's sort of stuck and not moving freely.  Joy, so I've a build where the rear wing mechanism is like 2500 parts (and ALL the bodywork) ago.  Not happy.  Not happy when this weakness is at the mercy of kids that think ALL technic rear wings should move!  Also, there's a few bodywork elements that are "supported" off 1 stud, including the iconic rear red-line which is done with one of the semi-rigid pipes.  So that has a tendancy to ping off.  Also the windscreen "A" pillar is some plates on a long tile anchored with 1 stud.

Saturday evening, and I've most of the stuff unpacked from the show and going back in the cabinets.  Bugatti has nowhere to live at the moment, so it's sitting there on the kitchen table, and it's looking at me, and I'm looking at it, and looking at the rear wing.  I HAVE to have a go!  So let's see how much of the rear top bodywork comes off..... and it turns ous that the wing is on a lift arm, and I'd managed to get one side ON TOP of the ball that acts as a stop.  So 10 bodywork elements and a dive in with a pair of needlenose pliars and it's sorted.

I'm now very happy! :)

Pics to follow!

[John]

Probably easier build a  real bugatti

[Royalridge]

Oh, the actual build itself was painless and less intimidating than the Porsche. 

With the Porsche the build was divided in to boxes, with multiple un-numbered bags per box, so you needed to open and sort a lot of bits before building.

The Bugatti was still boxes, but each box was a bunch of numbered bags that were used in sequence.  Each bag being roughly an hour (ok, some were 45 mins, some were 90 mins) to sort and assemble.  It made time management / estimation easier (for me anyway).

From an actual Lego side, the Porsche gearbox is quite flat laid out across the bottom of the chassis, in the Bugatti it's more "3D" and I liked building that.  The flappy paddle gear change on the Bugatti has both paddles move around the pivot, so you can actually just pull /push one paddle to go up and down, with the Porsche you pull on one to go up, and pull on one to go down.  Not sure how this relates to the actual car (having never driven either!) but in my experience flappys paddles are pull for up, push for down, not side specific.

[Royalridge]

TImelapse here - https://youtu.be/YXBlMFphyLo

[John]

I don't want time sorting i waste it searching and hearing the rummaging sound (early hearing loss claim), technic  always will my favourite now since I'm supposed to be an adult

[Royalridge]

My pre-sort is basically tip it in to an organizer box and split by colour. And for technic pins I just split them by the bag they came in.  I'm not down to individual part type level! 😊