Kerbscania - an articulated truck

[FlipNascar]

Decided I need an articulated lorry. Makes shameless use, straight out of the box, of Majorjim's stock bearing.

It's a flatbed trailer, that can be removed and reattached with the docking port jr. However, the bearing will freely rotate as you drive away... The bearing is surprisingly tough when the trailer is empty, but be careful with heavy loads. Don't use the brakes (ever) as it's likely to bust the bearing... You can put a boat on it. Or whatever. Boat sold separately thanks to Cupcake... Can be loaded with 4x FLT-800 and still drive and not break the bearing.

There's a docking port at the rear if you want to add Kerbals from a lander can (seats two!). Load 'em up (1 to toggle the ladders), climb up the ladder and board the seat from the ladder. Once strapped in, stage and start driving. The trailer has no brakes, so slowing down will take some time. It can, and will, roll if you drive it like you stole it. There's a probe core at the front for Kerbal-free driving. And the trailer has power and a probe core too.

Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rov1hztjhh7whpd/Artic-HGV-Flatbed.craft?dl=0

[Jakalth]

Couldn't you just use the trailers breaks to slow it down? or does it still suffer from bearing separation that way as well?

[FlipNascar]

Unfortunately not. When you switch to the trailer and brake, it also seems to put undue pressure on the bearing.

[Majorjim!]

I hope this isn't too much of a necro.

I never saw this post. I need to revise my bearing as it is too fragile for certain tasks. Namely sideways force a seen here.

I have a few good ideas for small bearings and am waiting to see the results of the river wheel update. I love the trailer though, if you are indeed still around.

[FlipNascar]

This was a very early build in my KSPing. So I hadn't yet figured out the way to make stock bearings work.

I revisited the truck idea briefly in August so I tinkered with a bunch of different designs and I found that the simplest one works best for me. No moving parts, just put the peg in the hole sort of thing, and uses the airbrakes to lift the trailer - those things can lift a decent tonnage. It can handle turns up to about 18/19ms and can haul I think it was around 18t.

Ignore the ramp, I never did finish that...

Edit: I am on tenterhooks for the rover wheel update. I expect it will probably kill every design I have that uses bearings, but hey, that's the cost of progress right?