So the other day, I did a small mention in my earlier post that with the Covid-19 pandemic and the ‘circuit breaker’ measures in place (also known as a lockdown) I bought a Lego Technic set online. It arrived a few days later and soon afterwards I started building the set.
This 2573-piece set is hugely complex! But it’s fun, especially when everything clicks together. There is this constant question at the back of your mind, like ‘what is the purpose of this piece?’ or, ‘how does this piece over here affect that piece I am building right now?’ I don’t have a lot of lego sets so I cannot make a definitive assessment on the level of complexity, but no doubt, Technic sets are definitely more complicated to build. And that is a good thing. The attention to detail is striking. The emphasis on making it move and work in harmony and making simply work testament to the commitment to make their sets as faithful as possible to the original from an engineering standpoint.
In this set, the Land Rover Defender, I am about half way done and I am floored by the complexity of this build. Every gear, every transmission system, every piston in the mock up engine all moves together and in harmony. Even if you don’t get to see inside when everything else has been built, it just works like a real thing.
But unfortunately, I am unable to proceed. It seems that after hours of futile searching, I am missing a crucial piece of Lego. I am not sure if I accidentally misplaced it (by dropping it somewhere) or inserted within the partially built set when it’s not supposed to, or simply it wasn’t shipped in the package and Lego happened to have missed out one piece in the packing process. I feel that I happen to receive a set with a missing piece.
The reason why I thought this would be the most likely case is that the piece that is missing isn’t exactly a tiny piece that can easily be misplaced or overlooked during the unpacking process as I was about to build it. If I were to accidentally dropped somewhere, I would have been obvious that I have a piece on the floor. But somehow I couldn’t find it anyway. The pieces that I unpacked from the plastic packaging is always immediately placed in a large tray, so that I can sort them out before beginning the actual build itself. So it is unlikely that a stray piece could have been misplaced as everything should be on a tray.
So my best guess is that I just happen to have a Lego set with a missing piece.
That missing piece is crucial. There aren’t any spare as it isn’t the tiniest of pieces, since Lego usually provide a couple of spares for the tiniest pieces just in case one were to lose it without being aware of it. That piece is also sort of a structural piece that is crucial to the overall construction, not merely an exterior cosmetic piece.
So I am a little bit annoyed that I cannot proceed until the replacement piece arrives by mail. Just when I was starting to get to the good part of the building process (the seats and dashboard of the Land Rover), I had to stop because I cannot proceed due to a missing piece.
I have reached on to Lego online and submitted a form requesting for the missing piece. I have never done this before, asking for a missing piece from Lego. It seems to be free. I have yet to get their confirmation email saying that the piece has been shipped. It seems that they will look into my request before shipping it out.
I hope they can send it soon. I really really want to build this set to completion. It’s bigger than I expected and looking at the interior workings of the vehicle and the chassis that I have build so far, this is one big set!
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