42209 Volvo L120 Electric Wheel Loader - Mods and Improvements

Paul B Technic · June 25

LEGO Technic 42209 - Mod - Rear Tow Mount Attachment

Recently I have been researching some different attachments for my LEGO Technic 42209 Volvo L120 Front End Loader. I have started to design some rear mounted attachments but firstly I needed to find a way to attach these to the L120. My goal was to build an attachment that required the least amount of changes to the standard L120 build (to make changing it back easier), while still providing a solid mounting point for my attachments and also looking good.

After looking at a few options, I came up with the below. The only change from "standard" is replacing 2 x 2L pins black with 2 x 3L pins blue, as can be seen circled in red below. These allow the beams to be attached to the chassis. A couple of pins were also used to attached it to the bottom beam. This will allow me to build various attachments but also easily swap it back to "standard" if I want.

Nazgarot · June 27

On 6/11/2025 at 1:39 AM, Appie said:

After reading Jundis' very informative topic about kinematics of wheel loaders, I gave it another whirl to fix the z-linkage and I do believe I have a very good fix now and it only takes a small adjustment with 6 4 extra parts.

An 8 or 9L axle

A frictionless 3L pin

~~2 half bushes~~ (re-used from parts left over from the original build)

2 liftarms 2x4

The main difference is that I changed the turning point of the z-linkage upwards to the next best available slot on the default model.

Placing the L-liftarms in the middle might be a little tricky, I don't have a solution for this yet except for placing the liftarms that hold the bucket outwards like in Jundis' mod.

Range of motion compared to the original model in the back (both without Jundis' earlier mod btw)

it's slightly less level than the original, trade off is that it can dip a little deeper:

The whole lift up and down can now be done without adjusting the tilt halfway through. At the very bottom of the lift LA's motion you get some resistance, similar to the orignal when the lift LA's are about 2mm away from being fully turned in. Since this is the best position to lower the bucket on the floor, I don't mind this. I wished the thing was level like the original at the top, but I can live with that for easier controls.

I've been doing a lot of testing trying to get this right. I first tried to mod it so the linear actuator was under the linkage (like the real machine), but it requires a lot of restructuring and basically rebuilding most of the loader arms.

I agree that this is the best quick fix, especially if combined with Jundis fix from the top of the page. This removes any forcing of the lift actuators in lower position and allows for a better up angle in lower position.

Thanks to both @Apple and @Jundis for these ideas!

Paul B Technic · June 29

LEGO Technic 42209 - Mod - Dozer Blade Attachment

I have recently been working on designing and building a front mounted dozer blade attachment for Lego Technic 42209, Volvo L120 Electric Frontend Loader.

I came up with the idea for this after seeing some construction work on a highway near my home. It is attached using my normal front quick mount attachment points, it can be both raised and lowered and the angle of the blade can also be changed,

Overall it works well and allows me to push around loads, using the L120.