MOC - Utility Offroad Truck (UORT)

I would like to present my latest MOC. This is a utility off-road truck. Recently I built the C model of set 42178, which is a slope tractor. I was very impressed with this C model, however I felt that some of the body parts could be better utilized in a truck type MOC. 

After stripping the c model to the base chassis, I decided to keep both the front function and the hand of god 4 wheel steering, however due to the change in design this had to be routed up through the cabin to the top via a black knob. 

My first step was to build a reinforcement around the chassis this allowed the controls for the front function to be routed out the side and also gave me space for the rear PTO controlled to be routed out the side. Both of these are controlled via black knobs on the side of the model. 

Next I started building the cabin, this required quite a bit of work as I was very keen to ensure that it had a consistent colour style, I don't have a huge amount of white pieces, so some design changes were required. I also had some issues with ensuring that the front lifting hitch function, would still work. This required quite a few design compromises, to ensure that it both looked good and the function work as I expected. 

Once I had finished building the cabin, my next step was to work on the rear of the model this included extending the chassis, to ensure that the tray had some support as well as routing the gears and axles required for the rear PTO to work. 

Finally I added some details including the lights on the front of the cabin, the roof lights,  mirrors, as well as the rear turning signals.

One thing that I'm not 100% sure I'm happy with, are the tyres. These are the original tyres that came with set for 42178, I do have a set of black tyres which I'm am considering swapping over however I do like the look of the grey tyres against the white and black body. 

This MOC has three main features:

- Hand of God 4 wheel steering, which is controlled via the black knob on top of the cabin.

- Front hitch can be raised and lowered by the black gear on the side of the chassis

- Rear PTO, which is also controlled by separate black knob on the side of the chassis. 

My plan now is to build a number of different attachments for this these include:

- Dozer Blade

- Winch

- Plow 

as well as various other towing attachments. I'm also designing a cherry picker and crane attachment for this. 

Overall I'm very happy with how this is turned out, I think that is a good size model and it gives me some really good scope to build some different attachments in the future.