Oh wow, had so many people ask me to review this on Facebook and Reddit, that I had to build this right away to check it out. I was going to build some other sets first, but I guess those can wait. Here for your viewing pleasure is the Lepin 02069 Building Crane set, it's a knock-off of Lego set 7905. Pictured above is the instruction manual.
I'm sure Lepin copied the Lego manual exactly, here is the back cover.
I bought my set from Reddit seller Jeremy and it came super quick, like under 2 weeks. No more waiting for months from Aliexpress anymore!
As you can see, the instructions list the subcomponents of the Building Crane by bag number. Here's bag one. It builds the little structures, minifigures and small accessories.
Bag two builds the building crane base platform.
Bag three builds the building crane tower.
Bag four builds the moveable control cabin.
And finally bag five builds the tower arms.
At least that what happens in a true Lego set, haha. In reality, the Lepin bags of parts are spread out and they are stencilled in to correspond to the Lego instructions. So in the above picture, you can see parts bags for subcomponents 3, 4, and 5.
Bag One - Minifigs and Small Buildings
Ok, enough talking, let's start building!
There are three construction minifigures in this set, all I believe are accurate representations of their Lego counterparts.
The first build is of the portable potty.
Oh yeah, got the cushy stuff.
Next up is the construction office with storage lockers, sink and tools.
Brick quality is good so far and no scratches on the window inserts.
Bag One done!
Bag Two - Tower Base
Apologies for the poor lighting, I was building the Crane set at 3 am. Gotta do what you gotta do.
I should remind our dear viewers that this isn't my first bootleg Crane set. I previously assembled the Sluban Tower Crane set and it has as many similarities as it does differences. You can find that review here.
https://its-not-lego.blogspot.ca/2016/11/sluban-m38-b0555-tower-crane-building.html.
In the near future, I will be comparing the two cranes, the Sluban Tower Crane vs. the Lepin Building Crane, so we can see which one is better.
The crane platform consists of a lot technic and plate pieces, making it super rigid.
Almost finished the crane's tower base. Installed the guard rails and tool rack.
Finally, I attached the support rods that will be attached in the next step that hold the crane tower in place.
Bag Three - The Tower
As you can guess, this will be the tower's most repetitive build, assembling the girders and supports.
It comes together pretty fast.
The crane's tower is four girder sections high.
Here is the center support beam that gets inserted down the shaft.
It is held in place by technic pins to provide the backbone for the tower.
To get to the control cabin, there's a ladder that that goes all the way up the tower. There's also a red valve at the base of the tower, not sure what that represents in real life.
The crane's tower is held in place to the base by these red pins.
With the supports in place, there is absolutely no sway or flexing of the tower. It is rock solid.
Bag three completed! Pretty awesome looking so far! I'll finish off this blog post tomorrow with Part Two of the Lepin 02069 Building Crane set. See you then!
