Lego Technic Mack 42078

[Alias218]

I was very fortunate this Christmas to receive this monster of a gift:



With thanks to my brother for that one!

With 2900-odd pieces you can either make the big rig or a rubbish truck - I've gone for the big rig.




So it begins! Look at the size of the instruction manual - over 400 pages of instructions, albeit in pictogram form and of course ignoring the 11-16 year old age group printed on the front of the box





It comes with mini-differentials!











That's it for now. That took approx. 90 mins to complete so it may not take as long as I anticipated to finish the whole thing, maybe 8-10 hours all told.

It's a very impressive bit of kit and the attention to detail is great, with some small stickers to add finishing flourishes. It's amazing that someone has managed to piece this altogether from the available bits to create this kit.

Before I continue, does anyone know of any LED kits to add some lighting to the model?

[Smoggy XJR]

Santa brought me one too.

I've got about as far as you have.

Twice.

I used 2 of the parts in the wrong place at about build 23 and only realised I didn't have the right parts until stage 78 or thereabouts.

[Alias218]

Easy to do. I made it quite far ahead in my previous Caterham build before I realised that I had misused a couple of bits!

Question for you: do you have the instructions for the rubbish truck? I only seem to have the ones for the big rig.

[vaderface]

B model instructions don,t normally come with the box.
You have to download them.

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/service/buildinginstruc...

Here you go.

[Alias218]

Thanks for the info, vaderface. I thought that might be the case.

I've made some progression with the build and it's starting to resemble a truck.

The next step following on from above was to make the front half of the chassis including the steering mechanism:



And the engine (I love the little crank):







It's the small details I like, such as how the wheel caps are made from pulleys:



With wheels attached and steering/engine mated:



And then to mate the two halves of the chassis:





You can see the propshaft as it moves from the back of the engine through to the diffs:



I'm a bit of a way ahead of this at the time of writing but copy/pasting pictures is tedious so more will have to wait! It's well worth the considerable cost of purchase - I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far.

[Schmeeky]

It's a great kit! I got mine last year and spread the build over a couple of days. Loads and loads of detail and an extremely fun build. My biggest problem was finding the space to display it!

[tog]

Only just seen this thread. We got this truck for my son's sixth birthday last week (it was an Amazon deal of the day), and he's been very excited. It took him all half term to build, so that was quite a result too. He did it almost completely without help, just a couple of points where he made minor errors that were spotted within a page or two, and he needed help mounting the cranes onto the trailer. 11-16 is a guide to the patience required I think more than to the skills required - Lego instructions are so clear.

The hand of god steering become disconnected yesterday though (through overzealous use I think), so there will be a certain amount of disassembly required to fix it I fear. It's the first modern big Technic Lego set I've seen built, and I'm quite jealous...

[Crasher242]

Only just seen this thread too!

My wife bought me the Mack set for christmas too - i enjoyed the build so much that i then went out and bought another set (eBay "unwanted" christmas pressie so a lot cheaper ) and have built the B model too.

I'll take some pictures over the weekend and get them up here.

[RC1807]

OP: re LED lighting kits for this, Google throws up a bunch of options from various places, ranging from US$55 to AU$100+ on the first search page