So this thing has be taunting me to about three weeks now. It had been sitting like half finished on the kitchen table, I moved it to the back room for a while so I wouldn't have to look at it. I knew I needed a straight two hours or so to finish - all I had to do was the actual forklift bit - but I also knew it was complicated.
I mean I was many hours in by this point - and this is a good time to point you to the previous chapters in this story the start and the middle As cute as the little (actually quite large) half finished creature was I really needed to get started.
Last weekend I managed to find some time and got underway. now the forks are complicated, or more correctly the functionally to get them to move up and down is complicated. You see it relies on a single string which is looped under and over things and in and out, so I was concentrating hard.
So hard I didn't take any photos, but here is a few steps before that - the vertical rails that the forks will sit in - the easy bit.
Pay close attention to this - it will become important later.
There were steps in the instructions where you put a pieces on and wrap a string around them and then promptly take them off again - it was weird but I thought I was getting there. Until I tried to put a couple of the major sub builds together and it didn't quite fit - I needed to add an extra bit to make it work - let this be a lesson to you, as soon as you go off the instructions (even the sometimes unreliable rebrickable alternative build instructions) you so really really consider if you have stuffed the whole thing up.
But I soldiered on, I weave string and out and all over the place and I built some prongs, and I got them to....well not quite work, they wouldn't really go down far enough. This wasn't right, I assumed maybe it was a problem with the tricky strong bit, but then I got to about ten steps from the end and I realized what was wrong. I'd stuffed up the the supports. They were too long, that's why I needed the extra bit, if only I'd stopped then I might have been able to track it back. I was two far in now, unsure where the problem was. I would need to start the forklifht mechanism again again. I couldn't face it that day - it would be another week until I'd find the time again.
So I rebuild - there is maybe 500 pieces in the forklift part of this build - the pieces I got wrong were about 20 pieces in - I used a 15 long green piece when I should have used a 13 long - something as simple as that
Here it is built right - compare this to the shot above and you notice that the two columns are the same size on the top one one is taller than the other.
This second time build was much easier - what took me two hours the first time I got through in just over an hour, and I was finished, and it was fnastic - it had been close enough to a month since I started - and about 5 months since I had my first go at this but now it's here the forklift - as I said in my first post - easily the hardest Lego build I've done.
I should mention it is impressively large - about 30 cm high with the forks down and about 70 cm with them up. the turning circle is amazing. It has 'hand of god' sterring using the air tank on the back.
But best of all is the very cool working forklift with a dial at the back to make it lift
