Lil-Mule - Assembly

Assembling lil-mule:

Once your Lil-Mule arrives and you open up the box, the above image shows everything you'll find in the basic lil-mule time- lapse dolly kit. As you can see, the basic kit includes the following:

The first thing that you will want to do is find a sturdy work surface and place the Lil-Mule dolly upside down and we are going the install the wheels (no tool necessary).

Take the geared wheel with the axle and washers included in it's bag and assemble with the axle through the wheel and a single washer on each side.

• lil-mule time lapse dolly base with controller installed

• 6 rpm motor with removable pinion gear

• Motor mount with 1/4-20 mounting hardware

• 3 elastomer wheels including bearings, spacers, axles, and washers

• 1 geared drive wheel, washers, axle

• "Tamiya" to 12v battery connector cable with velcro for attaching your battery (not included)

• 4 hex key wrenches and a 3/8-16 bolt for attaching your head of choice

Now you're going to press the geared wheel into the bottom right hand wheel hole with the axle centered in the machined axle slot.

It's the same wheel assembly process for the other 2 or 3 wheels depending on whether you want the 3 wheel or 4 wheel dolly set up. Take a wheel, put the axle through the center of the wheel, and a washer on each side.

Press the wheel into the bottom left hand wheel hole with the axle centered in the machined axle slot. Rinse, and repeat until you have the wheels in place and turn the dolly over. I'm using the 3wheel setup for illustration here...

Now we need to seat the wheel so that the axles are pressed into the bottom of their axle grooves. Place your hands firmly on the dolly and give a firm press all around the dolly to make sure the wheels are seated properly in the bottom of their slots.

Next, we are going to attach the motor mount with the larger hole through the middle pointing toward the controller.

Flip Lil-Mule on it's side and using the supplied hardware and allen key, attach the motor mount...

While you have lil-mule on it's side, go ahead and install the 3/8-16 mounting bolt you'll use to attach your tripod head with the supplied allen key and bolt...

Now you can flip the dolly back over and install the motor through the hole in the motor mount… ( will be loose until you tighten it in place ). Also, for the people that purchased the 3 motor option, an allen key was included to allow you to remove the brass pinion gear and move it between the different motors.

Rotate the motor until the pinion gear engages with the gears on the elastomer geared wheel and tighten with the supplied allen key. This is also how you "disengage" the motor to test out a shot you are setting up or simple use the dolly manually to shoot real time video.

Now, you connect the motor cables to the controller cables. It doesn't matter which goes to which as long as you are connecting male to female. Only difference would be the direction the motor will turn once powered up. This doesn't really matter as the controller is bi-directional anyway....

You're now ready to attach your tripod head, battery (along with the connector and velcro I included), and get lil-mule moving...