I took a brief detour taking care of a battery charging circuit, but now I can return to my LEGO nostalgia tour. I left off with a bunch of miscellaneous licensed LEGO merchandise, but what kicked off this nostalgia tour was the NASA Perserverance Rover kit. The rover set was part of LEGO's Technic line that feature mechanical capabilities. As someone interested in mechanical tinkering, Technic line is the best line to play with! I'm excited to enter the Technic phase of my tour with Crane Truck (8258), an eight-wheel behemoth featuring a midship-mounted crane. It didn't start well: when I pulled out the instructions sitting on my bookshelf, I noticed a problem. I had kept the sticker decal sheet in the first page of the associated instruction book, so it doesn't get lost.

But the sheet was slightly larger than the book, so about a centimeter of the edge was exposed to sunlight and those exposed edges suffered years of sun damage.

Damaged edges were liable to break apart into little pieces. When breaks occur in the middle of graphics, my rebuilt model would have to go without these unusable pieces.

Some of the decals had a clear separation between damaged and undamaged areas. In these cases I could make a clean cut and use the undamaged portions.

Some of the damaged portions are crinkled and damaged but did not break apart upon removal from the backing sheet, so I applied them and hoped for the best.

There is a single motor in this set, whose power drives one of four functions via a complex gearbox in the belly of the beast.

The gearbox complexity meant it's not always clear what function each part served. When a subset of gears seemed to be isolated from everything else, it's not easy to tell if a mistake was made or if it's just a matter of other parts yet to come. To relieve this anxiety, there were checkpoint tests included in the manual. Turn one part of the mechanism, and it move another part of the mechanism. If this test fails, backtrack and find out what was missed.

Four out of eight wheels could steer on this particular truck. I was pleased to see the turning ratio are different between the steering racks, a nod to their different Ackerman steering angles. Only a single pair of wheels on the tandem rear axles were driven with a mechanical linkage to the V8 piston engine.

The V8 engine is visible when the operator cab tilts forward, emulating what the real thing needs to do to service the engine.

When built, it is an impressive looking truck with a long chassis. I was disappointed with the mechanical functionality, though. In addition to the aforementioned drivetrain where only two wheels were "driven", the motorized functions only cover partial functionality. One of the four motorized axis of motion is to deploy/retract the outrigger system, but actually deploying outrigger feet needs to be done manually. The remaining three motorized axis operate the crane: two operate the azimuth and elevation of the entire crane, and the final motorized axis moves the crane elbow joint. Extending the crane or retracting the hook are manual operations, so it is not possible to play-operate this crane purely from the motorized function controls.

The trailer coupling ("fifth wheel") is purely cosmetic, there's no pretense of mechanical function at all.

Looking over the crane arm mechanism, I can understand the space limitations that made full motorization impossible. There's not enough room to run all the LEGO axles needed to transmit motor rotation. It's understandable, but I was curious if this problem can be solved with a different approach. Sometime later, this curiosity led me to buy a LEGO set that used pneumatic articulation.