Swap two gears and the 4x4 X-Treme Off-Roader pulls itself over obstacles that used to stop it. The instruction booklet does not mention it.

LEGO® Technic 4x4 X-Treme Off-Roader, set 42099
Technic 42099: 958 pieces, two of which sit in the wrong place if you want more pulling power.

We have been writing about LEGO® since 2016. Here are four things from those ten years that you can do with a set without buying anything extra.

Swap two gears

For extra pulling power, and with it a better ability to drive over obstacles, a small change gets you a long way. Swap the black and tan gears at building instruction 25. The same goes for the black gear at instruction 131. It should change places with the tan gear at instruction 145.

19 October 2019, about set 42099.

You trade speed for force. Every part is already in the box.

Mirror the instructions

Two identical sets side by side look like two identical sets. Build one mirrored and they become two halves of something bigger.

Reverse what the instructions say. If a brick goes at column 3, row 7 counted from the RIGHT, then the mirrored position is column 3, row 7 counted from the LEFT. This almost always works because of the symmetry LEGO® has by nature, but sometimes it does not, because of a corner plate for instance. The challenge is then to find a solution by using the bricks differently to reach the same result.

27 October 2022, about set 10275.

Two mirrored buildings pushed together give the illusion of one larger building.

What is left over

The leftovers at the bottom of the box are not leftovers.

You end up with bricks left over, and quite a few of them are white elements such as roof pieces. Ideal for giving other Creator houses their "snow" as well. So really it is not a 3-in-1 but a 4- or 5-in-1.

17 July 2018, about set 31080.

Grip on a smooth floor

Again no studs supplied on the tracks. For perfect grip on smooth surfaces you need 20 rubber pieces.

5 January 2019, about set 42095.

A track without studs slides on laminate. Twenty rubber pieces fix that.

The set as a parts box

LEGO® Technic Bucket Wheel Excavator, set 42055
Technic 42055: 3,929 pieces and the strongest motor LEGO® makes.

This is a set that gets used a lot in LEGO MOC designs such as great ball contraptions, because of the large number of usable elements and the strongest motor LEGO produces.

21 November 2018, about set 42055.

Sometimes you are not buying a model but a box of parts. Then what is inside counts, not what is on the photo.

Current prices for every set in this article are behind the links above.

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