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Power Functions Minitruck PDF Print E-mail
|   Written by Anthony Sava   | Thursday, 15 October 2009 19:03

In my article, A Power Functions Primer, I discussed using Power Functions with trains and gave an example of a geared bogie that could replace a 9v motor.  It works well, and I'll continue to use the design, but it is far too big to use on small locomotives, especially small steam engines with even smaller tenders. What we need is a much more compact geared bogie.

Well, over the past few days, I, along with a bunch of other Flickr users, have been trying to come up with just such a compact truck, a "minitruck". Ideas went back and forth, and finally, between user Shuppiluliumas and myself I believe we've finally come up with a design that works. I call it - the "Sava-Shupp Minitruck".

Sava-Shupp Minitruck v2

He calls it the "Shupp-Sava Minitruck", but I'm the one writing this blog entry, so there!

A note on the design - the horizontal 12-toothed gear on top would be attached to the rest of the truck via a 2x6 technic plate and a technic axle (not shown to reveal the rest of the design).

Comments (5)
  • theinformaticist  - Modification
    If you use BBB small wheels (possibly modified to use an O-ring, you can get the same spacing as a pair of standard non-powered wheels by using 3 of these bevel gears inside a normal 4-wide truck body. The trick is to use 1x2 technic bricks with 2-holes with a 1x2 with 1-hole sandwiched between on each side. The axles go on the inner hole on each end.

    I can post an image or SavaTheAggie can CAD one up. He has seen the design. My design does require BBB wheels as the LEGO official wheels have slightly larger flanges which hit at the narrower spacing.

    This modification is quite acceptable for light driving duties or for powering simple low-friction animations on non-powered cars (think Lionel (r) novelty cars)
  • Jake
    Thanks for putting the time and effort to give a very clear explanation. I tried to read the paper at first, but your explanation provided adequate explanation for someone who wants to get a first hand understanding that piece of information. By the way, torrent search useful as well! Keep up the good work.
  • Benjamin Heining  - Change my mind!
    Never was a great fan of the whole train theme, thought they where to small (the width)for minifig, 8 to 10 is more to scale, and now, with this idea, it's posible, now lets find me some tracks!

    Thanks for the good idea!
  • Younge
    Great solution, but a step-by-step would be great too!!! I can work out some of your build, but it would still be good to see the nitty gritty of the process you guys used.
  • gerrit carstensen
    good job!
    I'll for sure use this
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