I started my Lego adult path with the Mk2 crane, and now Lego has a new crane. This one is bigger, meaner, in some aspects, but hopefully better as well. Bigger wheels, but half of them, red instead of yellow, broader, and double crane boon instead of a triple one, so a different set of compromises. How did it go?

The model is quite impressive, as shown with this built photo:

Let’s mount the crane

First, small disappointment at the start: 13 big steps, and several of them quite small. It seems like Lego really wants to babysit the builders, there were only 6 steps in the Mk2 crane.

From the first step, we build the main gears from the core of the crane. Lots of different colors, like Lego does since a few years. I’m not sure exactly why they added different colors, as they are not really required:

We then add everything up to the wheels structure. There are no damper in this instance, which I find sad for a rough terrain crane. We still have all the required elements for a 4×4 with direction.

Bag 3 is a little bit sad, we go to the stabilizers, and frankly, they are very fragile, as will be seen later. The structure is not very thick, which means that they will be basically useless.

On Bag 4, very short bag, we build the start of the tower. It’s basically just setting up everything for later.

Then with another very short bad, we build the back of the crane with the 8V motor.

And then the front of the crane is even simpler…

In this bigger step, we reuse the big ring roads from the miner from 2 years ago, this time in dark black. As the boon will be quite heavy, it’s not surprising that additional elements need to be added, compared to the 8 times smaller Mk2 crane.

Bag 8 is small again, it’s mainly decoration ont he two sides of the tower, with small compartments that will store tools from the last bag.

And after this step, we add the 4 wheels. As the stabilizers are extended, we can confirm that they are useless and almost not even touching ground! Just for show then.

This bag starts the tower of the crane, with parts of the gear box.

We assemble the crane quite fast, and this step was a little bit annoying when the tower had to be fixed on the crane. We also put the L motor and battery in this step.

The boon is now assembled here. It’s made in a quite different way than the Mk2 crane from a few years ago, but it feels also far stronger, which is good, because the Mk2 boon felt fragile. The outside and the exteriors are different and thicker, which means more stability.

And we now have all the exterior fixed, with a nice door for the tower as well.

Conclusion

I still don’t understand the wish for bright colors inside new models, and I’m disappointed by the useless stabilizers, but otherwise, this crane seems better to me than the previous ones. We could get a few additional small pieces (none in some of the first bags), but that’s not why we buy Lego.

Lots of pieces, perhaps too many steps, but lots of details as well. And lots of things to play with.

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