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The bootleg technic McLaren F1 from AliExpress arrived a few days ago. For a first-time bootleg build it went as expected. There are no mold marks for part numbers or copyright - obviously - and there were a few parts with lots of mold flash that needed to be pared with a knife. The ABS is overall much-shinier and in some cases appears ever-so-slightly translucent. Color-matching was within expected tolerance, which is to say actually pretty good. Clutch tolerances are straight-up bad and inconsistent across the many different combinations of pieces; some pieces deathgrip together and others sign a prenup. That was also expected but did lead to a very painful assembly/disassembly.
Ultimately, my plan is to put the pins, axles, and pieces with obvious mold-differences like beams into a forever-storage bin, and lightly incorporate the more-covert pieces like frames and panels into my Lego builds. I'm not terribly obsessed about using authentic pieces but the molding on the beams is too much of a leap. Not too bad for 25 bucks.
