Every so often a creation arrives here at The Lego Car Blog Towers that makes us all go ‘…woah!’. This is one of those times. This beautifully presented model is Lucio Switch’s ‘Tow Truck MkII’ and it’s ridiculously brilliant.
As you’d expect for a model of this size (c10K parts and weighing 12.5 kgs) Lucio’s tow truck is motorised and remotely controlled, but before we even start looking at the electric functions there’s a host of non-motorised features to detail. These include all-wheel suspension (independent up front and live-axle at the rear), a fully suspended and pneumatically tilting cab complete with opening and locking doors, pneumatically suspended seats, and a V8 piston engine underneath. Storage lockers open on each side of the truck and five sets of Power Functions LEDs light the head and tail lights.
Which leads us nicely to the motorised functions, all of which are driven by LEGO’s Power Functions system with three on-board batteries hooked up to four third-party SBricks, allowing programable bluetooth control.
Nineteen separate Power Functions motors are present in Lucio’s model, with four XL motors powering the 8×4 drivetrain and three Servos turning the front two steering axles. Next are eight Medium motors, the first of which drives the pneumatic compressor that operates the aforementioned tilting cab and suspended seats.
The remaining seven Medium motors power the rotation and extension of the two enormous front outriggers, the extension of the two rear outriggers, the towing arm, and the rotation of the crane boom, whilst four Large motors power the crane lift, boom extension, and the two independent winches.
The four SBricks allow all of that functionality to be programmed neatly onto a smartphone from which the truck can be controlled remotely via bluetooth (take a look at the video below to see this in action), as otherwise you’d need a very large joystick controller indeed!
It’s one of the most outstandingly impressive Technic creations of 2019 and furthermore Lucio has presented his model beautifully, with superb high quality images and an excellent video demonstrating the truck’s functions. You can watch that video below, and you can see all the images at Lucio’s ‘Tow Truck MkII’ Flickr album here, join the discussion at the Eurobricks forum here, and read full details at Lucio’s own website by clicking here.
YouTube Video