Well I have run the TC6 at a few club meets.
Unfortunatly I wasn't able to get to the nationals, apparently getting married is more important....
I have found the TC6 to be very forgiving and fast. This is my first AE car so unfortunalty i can't give feedback against the earlier cars ie TC5. However i have been an avid user of Xrays with a bit of sucess.
The inital build was quite easy with the TC6 everythign made sense and went into place quite easily. The usually prep has to be taken car of ie a bit of snadpaper on the spacers, hubs etc and the good old arm reameer. Paramount to having a nice tight but free car. i dod find that the front hubs were a smaller diameter to the arm king pins so i used a drill bit and not a reamer.
The end result is a nice free rolling car, i was very suprised to how easily it rolls with brand new bearing, the xray had to be bedded in and even then it didn't roll as freely.
Carpet
I run both on indoor carpet tiles, not ideal, grippy but not consistant and out door ashphalt med grip.
My first run was on the carpet and car felt quick even with the box setup. Being a quite small track the gearing needs to be quite low, I found a small issue where my Orion vortex 2010 motor seems to have a larger front housing so the smallest i could go was a 7.8 f/d with the 4.5. With a 40ft straight this really isn't ideal.
I use Orion motors and LRP SXX TC v2.
I changed the setup only slightly with going to purple in the front and keeping the greens in the rear. I layed the rear shocks in to the second hole. I also changed the front sway bar to 1.5mm, (incidentally the xray front sway bars fit the TC6 all around)
The slipper spool was quite good on thecarpet and i had it set med to tight, the rear was also med to tight, the front was slightly heavier.
With just these changes I was able to set the fastest laptime by 0.2 so there is definatly more potential there.
Ashphalt
On the ashphalt I decided to only change the springs to blue front and silver rears. I was using the same motor and f/d. Instantly I set the pace and quote " thats the fastest that anyone has set around here in mod yet" to put it into perspective though the track had been closed since 2008 and has only just started being used again, well 9 months ago anyway, grip I would say is medium but it does depend on the day and it is not used all the time so not ideal.
I stuck with the Much more 32s premounts that I had left over from the NSW state titles so they were beyond their prime, as the day heated up the tyres started to drop off and over heat around 3 1/2 mins in. Others changed tyres to sorex 36 and went faster but only by 0.1/2 seocnds I was able to keep pace with them however the consistency of the tyres let me down. I didn't change tyres because I was looking for control tyre setups as we are also seeking a control tyre for the ACT titles in march.
All in all I am impressed with the car, its easy to setup and make it go quick, it doesn't bite your head off if the setup is just off the mark as i have heard report from others on the TC5. A few idiosyncrasies that the car has, but they all do.
A few build and maintenence notes.
Thread lock - I am not a fan of the liquied thread lock and is the glue stick style thread lock that way you can put a small omount on the end of the thread and it run down screws thread meaning when you come to undo it there is a lot of force required.
Areas that need it:
Bulkhead screws -bottom
Roll centre screws - Arm to bulkhead
Lay shaft screws - a very small amount people
Motor mount screws - Motor mount to bulkhead, if this isn't done and they come loose then it kills the spur.
Mistakes in the manual
I think in some areas the manual could be a little clearer, for example the a/b positions on the bulkheads for arm mounting.
The manual also indicates that the layshaft screw is an m3x0.5x8, it isn't its a M2.5 x 0.35 x8 turst me I lost one.
Saying that i haven't found anymore, the build and manual are quite intuative and if you have built a few cars before its quite easy, I just feel that there are a couple of areas that are imperative to the setup/handling of the car that need more emphasis for the inexperienced builders.
Summary
At first I was nervouse about changing cars. $1000 worth of spares for the xray (maintainence) in my pocket makes the decision even harder, peoples reports about the TC5 also seemed skeptical of the TC6 and its ability/durability. (incidentally the same night i was testing the TC6 on the carpet i ran my xray in the stock class, first time I have broken an xray arm, go figure)
I have found the TC6 to be easy to build, easy to setup and easy to drive, all of these combined make a good well rounded car that can only bring speed, consistancy and track time. I am glad that I made the move and I expect I will be quicker the more time I spend with car, which is great.