Thursday, September 20, 2018

Lepin 02069 Not Lego Tower Crane Set Review - Part Two




Hi and welcome back to Part Two of the Lepin 02069 Crane Building Set Review.  Recall that this Lepin set is a bootleg of the Lego Crane set 7905. In case you are just joining us, we already finished building the tower, the base and the small buildings and minifgures.  Here's the post for it:   https://its-not-lego.blogspot.ca/2017/12/lepin-02069-building-crane-bootleg-set.html.

Let's continue building the City Crane set.

 The next component of the crane to be built is the control cabin that sits atop the tower.

Here's how you get into the control cabin.  I forgot to take pictures during the build, so I took these next few afterwards.

Secured and protected from the elements.


The back of the cabin contains the crank that will operate the cable and winch. 


 The cabin sits atop this giant technic gear.  The gear sits on the upper tower platform.

The cabin is firmly held in place to the rotating gear by the four technic struts, two of which are pictured above.  The winch cable is threaded from the back of the cabin and over the top of it.

Now the entire cabin and platform assembly are attached to the top of the crane's structure and held in place by technic pins.  Some guard rails are added to the upper platform to give the cabin operator some safety as he's climbing out of the cabin on those windy days.

In this view, you can see where the ladder comes up the tower shaft and meets the platform. 


There needs to be an access hole through the platform so you can safely climb up to the cabin. 

As it is, you probably have to hang from the bottom of the platform and do a back flip up and over the guard rail.  Here's crane operator Mack, attempting that now ...


When applying for the job as this crane operator make sure you mention your gymnastics and acrobatics background.

 And here's how the structure looks so far with crane tower and cabin attached.  You can get some nice views of the buildings below.

Time to assemble the control arm, mostly composed of technic pieces and pins.

It attaches to the top of the cabin and held in place by more technic pins.  Nice and solid.

 Just another look from the front.

A look at the counterbalance.  This needs to be beefed up in my opinion.

The winch and pulley component of the crane ...

... slides along the top rail of the crane's control arm.

Ok, here's the test let's see if this puppy holds.

Oops, didn't realize there was someone already inside.  Clark really misses the days when phone booths were still around.


Oh crap, didn't realize Magneto was in the other building, let's hope he doesn't crush our crane tower with a thought.  Heh, luckily it's all plastic.

Speaking of plastic, here's some spare parts I got with the set.  They were in a separate bag that was un-numbered.



Summary

Well, there you have it!  Hope you enjoyed the pics and review of the Lepin 02069 Crane set.
This was by far, the best Lepin build ever.  No missing parts, no scratched glass, brick clutch was excellent.  As you can see the structure is rock solid and totally playable.  The crank and winch work perfectly, and I was able to lift up the porta potty and construction office with ease.  The only thing you have to manually adjust is the travel of the winch along the top rail.   This Lepin set was as close to Lego as it gets.   My rating 5 out of 5.



And yes, Mack did nail his backflip, but just barely.


So who wants to see a review comparing the Sluban Tower Crane to the Lepin Crane set?  Let me know!   As always, thanks for visiting Its Not Lego and See you next time!

Monday, September 10, 2018

Lepin 02069 Not Lego Tower Crane Set Review - Part One

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!