Reward in process

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

Amelia Earhart

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The procedure, the process is its own reward. I feel that's so applicable to life - Sure, the destinations and outcomes we achieve are also important but without the journey, the process, we'd never get there and through enjoying that process, the life-journey, we will live more fulfilled and complete lives. And, speaking of complete, I've got stage three of my latest Lego build complete with only one more to come. The process has been enjoyable and this post outlines a little part of it with a few pictures.

The main image above shows the end of stage two which was all about building the gearboxes and chassis section which the rest of the build sits upon; there's a few eletric motors in there also, but they might be hard to see. Below is a few images from stage three where the truck starts to resemble something that looks like a truck.

As with most of the Lego Technic builds there's a lot of moving parts including the engine. The image above top right shows the camshaft which is attached to the drivetrain of the truck so as it moves forward the pistons of the engine go up and down in sequence. Above lower left shows this in action.

This truck is remote control via the Control+ app and will go forward and back, steer, change gears and speeds, and the load bucket will raise and lower. In the main image at the top you'll see some of the mechanisms and gears that make that work.

After getting the engine built and installed it was time to finish off the cabin section including the front grille, hood, fenders and battery pack.

The above image shows snaps of the stages to bring the hood/fender section together - It's made as a couple of sub assemblies then fitted to the main chassis section. It all started with above middle-right and above top left is where it ended up. That section is fitted to the chassis then the black hood section is added. The grille tilts forward allowing the hood to tilt up to reveal the engine just like the real truck would do.

From here the side mirrors and battery pack is fitted and that was pretty much it for stage three. It took me about seven hours of build time to complete the stage; I like to go slow and enjoy the moments.

Above lower left shows the end of stage two and I've added that image to show the overall size against my hand. It's a big build. The other two images show stage three completed; the cabin and battery pack.

Eventually it will look like the image I took from the front of the box below. Cool right? Seriously cool. Ok, maybe you don't think so but I do y'all!

When I've got this build complete I'll do some better photos to show it off, probably outside ones to show this beast in it's natural environment; I may even do a video of it operating if I get enthused enough.

It's been enjoyable so far and a little challenging also. I got to the end of stage one and wasn't certain I'd done one particular component in the gearbox correctly so I pulled it completely apart and started again. Not my finest hour I can assure you. I'm hoping I got it right and this truck works as intended because if not...Yes, you guessed it, I'll pull it apart and start over. I don't mind failing, but I never let failure hold me back from achieving success so I'll keep driving at it to bring success into being. But I hope it works first time of course!

Either way, like Ms. Earhart says above, it's about the journey as well as the ultimate reward as that journey is reward in itself and so far the process of bringing this build together has been great fun and very rewarding.