8880 Super Car (2010) | Hacker News Reader

8880 Super Car (2010)

technicopedia.com

144 pointsarchielc58 comments

As a kid I always wanted the 8860 set: http://www.technicopedia.com/8860.html. It was well beyond the means of my family at time, and I had almost forgotten it existed until I discovered my wife's family had it in their Lego stash and thus I had a chance to live out my childhood again.

Building the 8860 made me realise how much Lego instructions have improved, as every step is basically a game of spot-the-difference trying to work out what pieces have been added. Not so bad for a small build, but in these complex builds it's a long process, especially when all the parts have been mixed into a larger collection of bits.

I wonder if there is literature about improvement in Lego instructions. Current instructions still don't highlight specific changes, although they do list out the parts to be used. As I've watched my kids grow to work it out for themselves it is interesting to see how much tacit Lego knowledge is needed to complete a particular step.

Some of them actually do highlight specific changes, but Lego Group isn't consistent about it, even in sets of similar scale released around the same time.

For example, the instructions in the Lego UCS A-Wing from 2020 don't highlight changes; the Space Shuttle Discovery (released 2021) instructions do (with a red outline around the pieces added). The Shuttle set's a bit bigger, but the two sets are fairly similar in terms of scale and build complexity; it seems that it's really up to the designer to decide how explicit the instructions are (whether or not things are highlighted, how many things happen in each step, when specific parts are called out with arrows, etc.).

Tangentially, I own a LEGO fanmade book with a detailed guide on how to create instructions for your own creations. I don't have it on hand, but I recall POV-Ray was involved.

I prefer the older type of instructions. They make you think - you need to plan out more of the build yourself, instead of just becoming a mindless brick assembly robot.

The 8860 instructions: https://bricks.argz.com/ins/8860-1

It's sad that they don't keep these sets going. Somehow my parents bought me a Technik set when I was a kid. I say somehow, because it's expensive to me now, and I grew up in the economic climate of the 90s in the USSR. I am almost 100% sure this set is the reason I am comfortable working on technical stuff ranging from code to mechanics to building computers, etc. The set in the OP actually teaches you how a transmission works - that's something few adults understand from tutorials, but its hard not to understand it when you build it.

Super cool, I didn't know this existed and would have loved building it in the 90s. At least I had access to Erector sets, Capsela, and hobby-level RC cars though.

Such models are a great way to learn how such machines work on a high level, but it's still missing some significant details. In hindsight I kind of wish someone left a busted small displacement sportbike engine in my parents' garage once I learned how to turn a wrench. It's an incredibly compact package containing a high-strung DOHC engine, multi-disc clutch, and multi-speed constant-mesh gearbox w/shifter. Just remember to drain the oil before conveniently forgetting about it in a dark corner for your inquisitive kid to discover.

I was more into computers than into Legos when the 8880 came out, but I liked this one: http://www.technicopedia.com/8865.html ... which I never actually had, but I had enough pieces from other sets to build one from the pictures in catalogs.

Impressive! I had set 8865 and it was the only set I had which had those suspension and wishbone pieces.

I don't remember where I had the suspension from, but I definitely had it from somewhere else. I may have bought a few missing pieces, though, or improvised. Details from 30 years ago are fuzzy :)

So many fond memories with this set. I mustve assembled and disassembled it dozens of times from elementary school to college.

But most of all it fed my own inventions and experimentation with parts. I knew them almost all by heart.

I think the coolest build it fed were the 6 or 7 generations of crash test cars I built to “study” how car crashes work and how to build a car that’s safe. The satisfaction you get from building a crash car to the latest design from memory then smash it into the wall from across the living room. Man that was fun.

One day I tried a rollover test and the custom wheel hub pieces broke. Now I can never rebuild the 8880 set again … sad

I wonder if the new Bugatti build comes close to the awesomeness of the 8880? Been thinking of getting that to relive some fond memories

The wheel hubs are probably available on Brinklink.

Apologies in advance for enabling your Lego addiction.

I remember always looking at this one in the stores as a kid, I could never have it because it was too expensive according to my parents. Over 20 years later I saw it on Marktplaats (Dutch eBay) and I immediately bought it, I haven't touched Lego in 20 years but this was the holy grail that I could never have as a child.

Site stopped updating models after 2016 (hope blakbird is alright), had to pop on wiki to find relief that technic line is still ongoing. Great memories. Donated my collection worth $$$$ to an orphanage after graduating, still a decision that I guiltily regret to this day.

A very noble decision. I bet your collection sparked the interest in mechanics or kept the mind off some trouble for some less privileged kids rather than collecting dust in a collector’s show room.

I just completed the Bugatti Chiron 42083 set which has a lot of similarities to this set.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/bugatti-chiron-42083

While I'm sure there's a large audience for all these highly realistic looking sets using tons of custom parts, I can't get myself to like them. I love the 8880 set for showing how much can be achieved in functionality and aesthetics by adhering to universal building blocks.

I am in the same boat - to me the "generic" Technik is the only lego that's worthwhile.

Ha ha, spent a day building a differential out of raw Technic parts — the thing was the size of a lemon. Then saw they introduced a specific differential part for Technic — the size of an acorn.

Edit: found the differential: https://www.walmart.com/ip/LEGO-Technic-differential-gears-G...

I think there is something special about building it out of random gears that really makes you understand how it work. Thanks for the link!

I was going to say that the 8880 also did have some special parts, or ones that at least I wasn't aware of existing in other sets at the time. The ball joints used for steering and power on the same wheels (I don't know what they're called), probably some parts in the transmission, etc.

I really had no idea what's been happening in Lego since the mid 90's, though. Looking at the set GP linked to, it probably has a much more custom parts than the 90's ones even if those also sometimes had specialized parts, and I'd have to agree with you.

Nostalgia! This was my first (and only) technic set I got when I was a kid. The most impressive here is the actual functional mechanical systems, all wheel steering, all wheel drive, differentials, gearbox, suspension, etc.

One past thread:

Technicopedia: 8880 – Super Car - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16788407 - April 2018 (14 comments)

For those looking for something similar, someone designed something called "Attika's 8880 EVO Tribute" which is on Rebrickable with some design updates and using currently available lego parts (as many of the 8880 are no longer produced), and you can either part it out or have some other party produce it using nockoff parts such as Vondado.

I thought this was pretty technically advanced in 1980.

http://www.technicopedia.com/8860.html

I had the previous one:

http://www.technicopedia.com/853.html

- which didn't have a rear differential. My father (an engineer) made one from regular bits which was spun by a large pulley with (trigger warning!) the centre drilled out so an axle could freely pass through it.

I had this one as well, I think around age 7. It was my first "expert" set. Legos were my life until computers!

It was also great when the electric motors and battery box came out. With a bit of gear work, you could actually take that 853 and motorize it... working engine and all.

Yes, if memory serves I you mounted the motor on the front bumper in a way that looked a little bit like a supercharger. It made the rear axle shudder around corners - hence the MacGyver’ed differential!

I had the 8440 as a kid[1]. I loved that set.

[1]http://www.technicopedia.com/8440.html

I had a lot of other big technic sets at the time. I remember this one, and I also remember my parents telling me it was too expensive.

They were not joking.

Not too long ago I wanted to gift a technic set and I was shocked at the prices. The fact that most modern sets also use a lot of custom parts was also something that goes against the lego mindset IMHO.

It would still be something that I would totally buy for my children, but not as a gift for somebody else.

My parents bought me this set for my 13th(?) birthday. It cost a lot of money, maybe a third of the average monthly pay in my country.

It was gathering dust on some window sill for a long time and when I went to college, they donated the assembled car to some kid without my permission. He wasn't even poor and they didn't give him the box or assembly instructions.

I'm still angry about that. I never built the alternative F1 car.

That sounds really hard to deal with! Sorry.

I had this set and sadly never finished it. I ran into a lot of issues putting it together (I forget my age at the time) and then at a given point I found a manufacturing defect in a piece that halted my progress and never moved past that.

Today it's incredibly easy to order a replacement for a missing or defective piece online. I imagine if I had this set intact today, it would've been trivial to continue.

Awesome site. Wish it kept going after 2016. The Range Rover (42110) released in 2019 has a lot of the same features.

+1 The Range Rover is amazing. I don't have the English vocabulary to correctly name what they do, so I'll just summarize with: if you can still get one, it's an amazing experience to build it, how things come together, especially how rotation elements go around some pieces.

I _really_ enjoyed building and playing with LEGO as a kid but lost interest in it as I grew older. I remember having started but never finishing a kit from the technic series and whenever I see such a set I'm wondering what exactly is it (adult) LEGO enthusiasts are you getting out of building/owning such a set? Below are some reasons I can think of, none of which I find personally convincing enough to start building such a kit, so I'm hoping someone can share their perspective on this matter

The challenge of completing a complex puzzle? Building something that pleases you aesthetically? The desire to find out how stuff works by rebuilding simplified mechanical toys? Having a toy you can just play with? Having a collectible item?

Lego for me were about building new things from scratch; of my own invention. I never understood the make-this-exact-thing in Lego. I have bought a few of those newer kits, and they were more like puzzles (but with instructions, hmmm...).

Plastic models (of spacecraft, aircraft, cars, etc.) fulfilled that role for me: make a thing to look like a thing — and with so much more fidelity than Legos.

There is a sculpting aspect to model kit building; building in 3-dimensional space that I like about it. You understand the thing in 3 dimensions as well (whereas you were most likely only familiar with it in 2 dimensions, such as, for example, the way the Millennium Falcon spaceship is represented on screen or in stills).

There too is an aesthetic about the thing you are building. A car model might be of a car you have always liked the design of, could never hope to afford. In building (and later displaying) the model you are coming to grok the form and design lines you have enjoyed.

Honestly though I tend to not really have the room or inclination to display my models. Not sure if the journey was the reward and I ought to bin them? LOL, why do I do it?

I'm a few years too young to have had this set, but I did have the Space Shuttle/submarine set (http://technicopedia.com/8480.html) and the red supercar with some flexible part (http://technicopedia.com/8448.html) and the pneumatic crane (http://technicopedia.com/8460.html). Was I spoiled? Sure sounds like it now.

I can only hope to give the same joy to my own kid some time i a few years

I've got the space shuttle, sadly all the cables have perished and the little red motor no longer works.

I have to admit my Lego Technic hasn't come out of the box in a while, no idea if that stuff still actually works. I used it ~2 years ago to make a prototype for work though, great stuff for that too.

you know nintendo uncle? Well my mum was lego's first employee in Australia, she spent a summer holiday playing lego with kids at the Melbourne department store Myer. She had a cool lego enamel pin that as I a kid I was obsessed with to the point of losing finding, wearing everywhere all the time, breaking, losing traumatically forever. I ended up with not the 8880, but the 8860. It was mind blowing (the diff and the steering!) I'm still building stuff with the bits with my own kids 40 years later.

> For this reason, among others, I rate this as among my top 5 sets ever. The only reason I can't rate it #1 is that all 5 are so good.

I wonder which are the other 4 sets.

I have this car, get it on my 11th birthday. It has indeed a lot of interesting items. I build with lego from my 4th to around 18th almost everyday, and this was indeed one of the best i received. I always build custom vehicles, cars, trucks, tractors, etc. and i used a lot of the parts of this car. Now i see it again, i think i have to build it again, and hope i can find back all the parts in all my lego storage boxes :)

Despite the claim that the driven wheel hubs are only in 8880 they also show up in the Porsche 911 GT3 RS (42056) which is fascinating for the combination of technical detail (no rear-wheel steering, though, sadly; maybe speed-dependent direction is simply beyond Lego) and fairly accurate appearance.

What has always bugged me a bit is that the large car models are a bit too heavy for standard Lego motors to power them.

I got this when I was about 8 as one of my first Technic sets yet, what a great memory. Think I prefer the Formula 1 version of 8880 though :D (https://www.flickr.com/photos/125424377@N04/23490561113/in/a...).

I was thinking that it also has a semi truck configuration, but I was confusing this set with 8458:

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/lego-technic-8458-sil...

The permutations in these sets are extraordinary.

I bought and built this for my 21st, which is now over 21 years ago.

I had this set as a kid, and loved it. Unfortunately, it didn't survive moving houses, and my parents have already passed away. Nowadays, you'll need to pay a fortune online to get one of these.

Was given the 8880 Super Car as a kid. Pretty sure it's the only reason I survived a vacation on an island having, unexpectedly, no automatic transmission cars.

Why was no automatic transmission cars a problem?

Apparently manual gearboxes are rare in the states and beholden to “sporty” cars. “Driving stick” is a specialty. In Europe it is the other way around and automatics were rare. Now with hybrid and electric cars automatic transmissions are becoming more popular.

OP learned how to drive stick from the technic set

Waw, great memories. The set also came with instruction booklet to make an F1 car, which was just as cool.

I grew up mostly on K'NEX but there was one Lego kit I just had to have, and that was this.

My best christmas gift.

I bought that with my student loan. No regrets :)

Probably did more for your education than any one of your classes at the time. Absolutely not joking.

I don’t disagree. I self taught myself my entire degree.

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