on the contrary, though I am not very experienced with maya, hydraulics are actually fairly easy to do once you get a firm grasp of it. A few other things (springs perhaps?) may take a bit of blendshaping, but you shouldn't have much trouble with it, methinks. Perhaps, though, I'm a bit partial to modeling Just use your time wisely and be sure to leave yourself a week or two to tweak animation and renders.

this looks nice, man. Keep it coming, I'm interested in seeing how this will look