42098 Car transporter (recreation)

[Cumulonimbus]

As requested by Jim, here's a separate topic about the upcoming 42098 set and my attempt of a recreation of it. The truck represents a European car transport truck:

Based on the blurry preliminary image which floats around the internet and a lot of guesswork, I made the following in LDD.

Things I learned so far about the set while interpreting what I see in that one image:

• The trailer feels a bit short in relation to the truck, I guess there is only room for 5 cars (3+2), while the real truck should easily hold 7 (3+4)
• The lower deck of the trailer and truck is a bit high in relation to the ground compared to the real deal, so I suspect the tilting mechanism is hidden under the lower deck.
• This tilting mechanism is based on beam-built diagonal supports, which rotate at the top and slide at the bottom. This is an elegant solution keeping the bulk of the system inside the truck.
• The width of the cabine is 15M, the truck bed is 17M wide and I suspect the diagonal supports stick out 1M on each side, making it 19M in total. The blue car is 15M wide, as is the 42093 Corvette. But the mirror of the latter will probably be too wide.
• There will be a lot of room for a fake engine under the cabine, but this will be very hard to see because the cabine can't tilt due to the fixed upper deck above it. This room might be useful to motorize the set?
• Although the truck uses the same wheels as the Mack, the scale is not the same.

I will see how far I can take this, it may evolve in a wishful thinking truck or even a MOC inspired by the set,

[suffocation]

Impressive work

I can barely guess a single colour from the only available picture and you're reverse-engineering the whole set

[Jurss]

Looks interesting.

[pleegwat]

Another reason I can think of that the deck is rather high would be because lego wheels are rather wide, the wheels of the truck need to be below the deck, while on a real transporter they can be beside it. Though your example doesn't match that.

Using a gear rack outer part as 'rails' for the sliding support may work well, but the inner part would probably collide with the wheels. An LA in the support itself would work better if the support were the other way around, angling forward at the top, but this would require the supports to be 2 studs wide which is probably too much. Gear racks similarly are 2 studs wide so probably aren't in the support.

[1gor]

Impressive modeling from one blurry image 

[Ivan_M]

I guess only the "railing" is 17 studs wide, whole truck should be 15 wide, it would'n look good. I'm not really fond of such solution, real trucks don't have such high walls at all and it looks too bulk. It is very easy to make such railing without widening the bed, just use 3,18mm bars, clips and rigid tubbing. It would look better, more realistic and would use much less plastic, providing room elsewhere on the model.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Ivan_M
typos

[Equilibrium]

I was also trying to build it in LDD (figuring dimensions and front mostly). Here's what I came up with so far:

That 90deg tube pointing down should be pointing back but it interferes with small panel so this is probably not how it's done. Front wheels might be one stud to the back, hard to tell. And one of the side panels might be 11 studs instead of 7.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Equilibrium

[Cumulonimbus]

@Equilibrium Interesting to see that we estimate the length of the truck so differently. I think my version might be a tad too long, but keep in mind that the angle the truck is positioned in the image really skews the perception of length (this effect is called foreshortening).

Anyway, below is my best guess at the movement of the top deck. As said before, the base of the diagonal support slides forward and backwards. but is in itself rigid. I believe this whole mechanism is located in front of rear axles, which is not realistic, but this is where the required space is in the model. A Arocs gear rack fits beautifully and provides the sliding action. I'm think the rack doesn't provide the actual movement, that will be done with a LA I guess

Speaking of the real truck: I found out that the mechanism is actually the wrong side up in the set.  In the real thing the base of this support rotates and the top connection can slide. Additionally, the diagonal is also pointing forward instead of backwards. But the constraints of Technic bricks and the scale has led to this solution.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Cumulonimbus
Updated image

[Equilibrium]

@Cumulonimbus Yes, I know. That's why I based the length on the small side shoot on the bottom right corner. It looks like the space between front and 1st rear axle, could fit 3 wheels one next to eachother. Main picture was only for the panels reference. And now that I'm looking at it some more I think the side panel should be the 11 studs long one (with many pin holes).

[joe0310]

Can anyone tell me where to find the blurry picture of the 42098?

thank you for the quick responses

Edited February 6, 2019 by joe0310

[Seasider]

@Jim I can see a 2019 competition idea for designing a 15 wide car without PF to fit on this trailer ;)

 

[Cumulonimbus]

On 2/6/2019 at 2:00 PM, Seasider said:

@Jim I can see a 2019 competition idea for designing a 15 wide car without PF to fit on this trailer ;)

 

I like that idea, with the small fender pieces coming in three colors by August, all kinds of interesting liveries are possible:

[1gor]

Yeah it looks like year of fenders 

[Aleh]

It's not good when car transporter has the same wheel size as the transported cars... In the real life this is impossible.

btw I mean lego set, not this particular recreation.

[1gor]

2 hours ago, Aleh said:

It's not good when car transporter has the same wheel size as the transported cars... In the real life this is impossible.

btw I mean lego set, not this particular recreation.

that is logical thinking...but perhaps transporter will have 49.5 tire and car 43.2, but real cars in that class have some 650-700mm tires and trucks have from 900-1100mm tires...so 62,4 would be more suitable...

Edited February 8, 2019 by I_Igor
forgot to add approximate tire overall diameter

[Ngoc Nguyen]

If the cabin cant tilt, how do people get access to the engine in the real truck?

[Cumulonimbus]

1 hour ago, I_Igor said:

that is logical thinking...but perhaps transporter will have 49.5 tire and car 43.2, but real cars in that class have some 650-700mm tires and trucks have from 900-1100mm tires...so 62,4 would be more suitable...

Correct, my version of the truck has 49.5 tires like the Mack, the car has 43.2 tires like the London bus. You're also right the 43.2 wheels are bit too big for a truck this scale, leading to cars which as a bit to wide for the the truck (compared to the real thing).

26 minutes ago, Ngoc Nguyen said:

If the cabin cant tilt, how do people get access to the engine in the real truck?

The fixed part of the upper deck can be tilted upwards hydraulically when it's empty. This gives plenty of room for the cabine to tilt. You can see the small black cylinder to tilt the (grey) deck in this image:

Edited February 8, 2019 by Cumulonimbus

[Ngoc Nguyen]

On 2/8/2019 at 5:57 PM, Aleh said:

It's not good when car transporter has the same wheel size as the transported cars... In the real life this is impossible.

But, why though?

By the way in the sets the truck uses Mack wheels, while the car uses Corvette wheels, so there's no violation of your observation.

Edited March 5, 2019 by Ngoc Nguyen

[Aleh]

4 hours ago, Ngoc Nguyen said:

But, why though?

By the way in the sets the truck uses Mack wheels, while the car uses Corvette wheels, so there's no violation of your observation.

I'm talking about real life 

[1gor]

Just now, Aleh said:

I'm talking about real life 

Agree with real life; real truck that transport cars have 22.5" tires and cars have tires with some 70% of truck tire size

[keymaker]

4 minutes ago, I_Igor said:

Agree with real life; real truck that transport cars have 22.5" tires and cars have tires with some 70% of truck tire size

In such case, 37mm tires (but only in case of outer size, unfortunately not the width) would be better than 43mm tires when compared to truck 49mm tires.

[1gor]

44 minutes ago, keymaker said:

In such case, 37mm tires (but only in case of outer size, unfortunately not the width) would be better than 43mm tires when compared to truck 49mm tires.

Yes, you're right 

[Cumulonimbus]

Update:

[1gor]

it looks to me that on truck posted in this post

sidewalls are much lower that with panel 11 x 3; perhaps just one beam over panels to gain 2 studs overall height and not 3 studs...

[Rudivdk]

33 minutes ago, I_Igor said:

sidewalls are much lower that with panel 11 x 3; perhaps just one beam over panels to gain 2 studs overall height and not 3 studs...

I was thinking the same, looks like 2studs high to me as well instead of 11x3 panels... Apart from that @Cumulonimbus nice work on reverse engineering both the truck and car!!