Nice to have a PF truck without having to get something really big like the tow truck or 42009 .

I look at this and see nothing but broken parts if I were to own it. Every 3L blue pin, every half width beam, every axle forcing every bushing to crack. Technic is supposedly LEGO's strongest system, but it always finds a way to break on me, and I don't even do anything but put the set together exactly as instructed.

Power functions?

13-wide? That’s a little big for minifigs...

@MCLegoboy:
I had some bad luck in the early 00’s, with white Technic saddle joints that would split on the axle end, but that appeared to be a batch issue. I’ve also blown up at least one 8-tooth gear, but there’s not much to them, and it’s easy to load them up with too much torque. And when I first started making my Bioniwars MOCs, I remember having huge problems with the backpack on Jango Fettoa, where pushing the old 1x1 cones into the ends of a 1x5 beam would split the ends right open...but they added a flange to the tip that solved that problem.

A fair set. It won't set the world on fire but it's a fine example of what it's trying to be.

I give it a grade of B.

This is not a bad set but not that interesting either. Power functions are always a plus.

Sadly, this set is symptomatic of what pushed me away from Technic. The sets I liked used bricks and pins and looked "solid" (if that makes sense), instead of being made out of lift-arms, panels and custom pieces of plastic like they are now.

This is a nice set with some functions, it even has an interesting B-Model. It also had a hefty price tag, but it comes with power function, so... I guess it's okay.
It is missing the enginebay.

A really like the actuator in this set as it makes it function very similar to the real thing which is what makes Technic special. Even if you didn't want the truck, this set had a good supply of beams etc. to experiment with your designs or combine with other sets to expand your creativity. The £50 price seemed especially good value when you consider Lego were selling only the battery and motor set 8293 for £35 for 11 years!

I have this one. It's fits in a category that modern Technic no longer seems to accommodate (poor margins I guess) - the medium set with power functions and interesting functionality. The hook loading/tipping mechanism is really quite clever for the price point.

@GrosPanda1979 said:
"Sadly, this set is symptomatic of what pushed me away from Technic. The sets I liked used bricks and pins and looked "solid" (if that makes sense), instead of being made out of lift-arms, panels and custom pieces of plastic like they are now."

Almost none of the old style technic set looked solid, most of them were less covered than they are now (thanks to those panels you seem to dislike). And this set is quite typical for a proper technic set- it has moving functions that you can see without disassembly but from a distance it looks "covered".

@AustinPowers:
A lot of older parts have either been discontinued or heavily updated due to having designs that made them prone to breaking, like the toothed Technic plates and half-bushings. For transparent parts, it was more about the material (acrylic vs polycarbonate vs whatever they just switched to), but they did even change the 1x1 round plate mold, as that’s the part that broke the most during my childhood. The old version was round on the inside, where the modern version is cored out a bit more, with four contact points left in the cardinal directions. This lets the rest of the sidewall flex just a bit as you pry them loose, which greatly reduces the stress put on the bottom edge.

@thor96 said:
" @GrosPanda1979 said:
"Sadly, this set is symptomatic of what pushed me away from Technic. The sets I liked used bricks and pins and looked "solid" (if that makes sense), instead of being made out of lift-arms, panels and custom pieces of plastic like they are now."

Almost none of the old style technic set looked solid, most of them were less covered than they are now (thanks to those panels you seem to dislike). And this set is quite typical for a proper technic set- it has moving functions that you can see without disassembly but from a distance it looks "covered".
"

If you started from a clean sheet you would use the modern beams (with same height and width), connectors and panels, mainly as you can build easily both sideways and upwards. Which given you normally start from the rear car differential made far more sense then having to space Technic bricks with 2 plates to build upwards as in the 8860 car chassis. As for the paneling after 8880 something else was needed to look more realistic. I agree this is all not traditional system Lego, but Lego needed to do this before a new competitor realized and stole market share as the next generation find this far more easier to build with.

So hard to find good Technic sets like this now, maybe I should start buying 2007-2013 sets, especially seeing as they're about retail used.

@ambr:
Both System-Technic and modern Technic had problems. The old stuff just required too much bulk to do simple things, like tip the bricks vertical, or add bracing. But they fixed that by switching to beams, which significantly reduced overall size required to achieve the same result. The new stuff just wasn’t very rigid once you started building in three dimensions. By they fixed that with the “Hassenplug”, which allowed two beams to be connected at right angles where the holes are not parallel to each other. From what I understand, the current state of Technic construction should be as rigid as the old stuff, but far sturdier and compact.