Since I'm uploading video in another thread I thought I might as well do a quick one of my 42009 motorisation. The container lifter is actually really easy to motorise, the body is quite sparse and it's almost as though the designers thought about it. I dropped a servo in over the steering and an XL motor in behind the diff with almost no effort at all.

Adding motors to the boom was a bit more tricky, and I haven't bothered with the rotation (yet). But the gearbox was so big that the final model is about the same size. The L motor lifts the boom, I left out the clutch gear so my lift is faster but it struggles when the boom is extended. There's two more M motors for extension and grab.

Pictures on my web site

(yes, I put a manual steering knob on the back of the servo. To match the original, of course).

Edited February 23, 201411 yr by Moz

Nice work! Are you going to motorize the truck that goes with it?

Here's the lifting head modified to have two driven axles, so I can motorise rotation as well as release:

(click for bigger)

(the new mechanism is sitting on axles poking out the side of the existing one)

More details:

(bigger)

The colours are purely what I have easily available, so I'll fix those up before I actually fit it. Waiting for a pile more "technic angle connector with two axles", there are 5 in the photo when there should be six (the closest one, under the red liftarm, is missing). Also, the 8T that drives the turntable is offset one stud to the left to make the drive easier. It still works. Note the complexity of the "platform" where the 14T bevel sits - there's two 8T under that to shift that axle back to the centre of the turntable.

Have completed it, and taken a few photos but don't have time to edit. Here's the inline gearing down to make the rotate function less circus-like. Gears skip more than I'd like because the gears are only held together by friction on the axle below them. But that's how I got 1.5 stud spacing on the axle holes to make this work (not enough room for bigger gears without redoing the motor position).

Thanks for sharing this, looks like a really good modification.