I've been meaning to make a model of one of these for a while now, we use them at my work for cutting sports fields. This competition is the perfect reason to do it, hopefully I can get it completed in time!

The real machine - https://www.dropbox.com/s/l5l6zkpjqmid675/LT324A.jpg?dl=0

It's going to have an XL for drive, servo steering, M motor for spinning the cutting reels and an M for an auto valve for the pneumatic lift and lower. I haven't gotten very far yet, but have managed to get the wheelbase and widths right, need to build the rest of the chassis and come up with a design for the cutting heads.

Rear steering axle is a slightly modified unimog axle, there's plenty of strengthening around the front axle to do. Not sure how I'm going to get drive to the cutting cylinders yet, the real one is all hydraulic and that isn't possible, but I should be able to work something out I think.

So its AWD? Why so large scale? It may be hard to make strong body and cutting heads in this scale.

The real machine is hydrostatic with individual wheel motors, so yes, it's AWD. I was going to have just 1 XL powering both axles and have a drive shaft between both axles, but I may change that and have a motor per axle so I don't need to worry about a diff between the axles. Or I may make it an LT322 cos that's only 2 wheel drive!

The only lego tyres wide enough for the front wheels are power pullers, so I scaled it from that. The real machine is fairly small, so although it's 1/6th scale, it won't be much bigger than Jurgen's PF backhoe, which I bought the power pullers for. I'm hoping I won't have too many issues with the size, this is my first proper MOC and it's proving to be a bit of challenge already! I may have bitten off more than I can chew...

I hope you will make a great model.

I am just afraid that the scale is very large. Judging from the picture you provided, it seems that cutting heads are going to be nearly twice as big (height-wise) as the power puller tire, which is very big, and probably very heavy, not to mention parts-consuming/

If you are going to put one motor per axle, you might have run into the even bigger problems, because each motor will drive its axle in different speed, cos the axles have different sized wheels. Better stick to one drive motor and diff between axles.

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Made quick mockup of a cutting head, it doesn't seem too bad, but haven't made the cylinder inside yet. The quick pneumatic lift I made lots it fine, the front ones will be little more tricky tho.

I will have to measure the real ones when I'm back at work to see how close I am with the cutting head I've made, it looks about right to me but could be well off!

Thanks ffor the advice with the motor, I'll have to rethink my XL motor placement and put a middle different in, there should be plenty of space!

Edited December 26, 201410 yr by theozboy

Finally had some time to do a bit more, hopefully I'll be able to finish it in time.

My new servo motor arrived today, so that had been fitted and works brilliantly. Spent a good few hours yesterday evening fitting a centre diff and remounting the xl motor. Took a lot of revisions before I had a satisfactory drive train.

I've also made an auto valve, inspired by dot technics one on YouTube.

Now on to working out the cutting units, the mock up I made was 2 studs too long and not wide enough by 2 studs, nearly right!

Edited January 21, 201510 yr by theozboy