One of our members sent in photos of their finished Rough Terrain Crane (42082), and they did not just leave it on the shelf. The outriggers are down on their pads, the boom is out, and one of the grey wall sections from the box is hanging off the hook: on the sideboard, on the lawn and on the edge of the patio. I love that sort of thing.
A finished model on a shelf is always good, but a crane actually lifting something tells you more. You can see how far the boom reaches, how low it will go and how the outriggers spread the weight. It is the closest you get to seeing what the set is like to play with without having it in front of you.
The 42082 was the biggest Technic set LEGO had made when it came out in 2018: 4,057 pieces in red and black. One Power Functions L-motor drives the outriggers, the turntable, the boom lift, the boom extension and the winch through three gearboxes, and levers choose which one runs. The steering and the V8 with its moving pistons are manual.
That is a lot of crane for one motor, and it is why I like it.
Rough Terrain Crane
The clever part is the turntable. The upper half carries the boom, the motor and the battery box, so the designers built a ring from curved gear racks, sat a second ring on top, and put eight small train wheels between them as a roller bearing. The whole superstructure turns through a full circle on it. Move a lever, pick a function, and the one motor does the rest.
What you are actually building
With the main selector down, the motor works the chassis. One lever winds all four outriggers out together on small linear actuators, slow and even, and four tiled pads go under the feet. The other lever turns the superstructure on that roller-bearing turntable.
With the selector up, a gate-style shifter picks one of the three boom functions. Two linear actuators lift the boom from almost flat to almost upright, the two-section boom runs out to nearly twice its length, and the winch winds the hook in and out. Extending the boom does not pay out string, so let the hook down first.
It is a big thing to live with. In driving position it is 76 cm long, and with the boom up and out it reaches past a metre, so it wants the floor or a deep sideboard rather than a shelf. The member’s photos show exactly that. Four grey wall sections come in the box for it to lift, each with two chains, and they are what you can see on the hook here.
Every motorised function on the 42082 runs off a single L-motor, via three separate gearboxes. The motor only ever turns one way; the levers choose the function and its direction. That also means you cannot run an outrigger and the winch at the same time, which one reviewer reads as protection for the motor. Stickers by the levers tell you which is which, and the back of the tower comes off for battery changes.
Thanks to the member who sent these in. Photos of a crane actually lifting something are exactly what I want more of on the blog. If you have photos of a Brick Club kit, finished or half-built, send them over.
Rent the Rough Terrain Crane (42082)
Brick Club is a LEGO Technic rental subscription with 200+ kits in the library. One kit at a time, delivered to your door. Build it, send it back, and the next one comes out. No buying, no selling, no storage problem.