Not broken a plastic b44 arm in months ,last set I just installed because the old arms were worn.

I believe Ae just made another running upgrade because to me there's a change in the plastic & its appearance.

I bet we see a B44.2 Worlds Edition and it will have all of the stuff that Hartson ran at the worlds. Alum chassis, beefed up gears/cups, v2 big bores, new front arm/bulkhead design, alum/carbon akerman, etc. Probably have a gear diff FT option.

The interesting thing is schelle(KURT WENGER) has recently released their chassis and will be releasing their saddle pack update soon too. Since Kurt is am Associated guy it seems odd to think there will be any chassis change or it would be extremely odd with someone having his knowledg within AE to put that much time and effort into a part that which could be obsolete shortly.

In fairness, last fall Kurt developed an awesome mid motor B4.2 conversion which he was planning to release in early 2014, presumably to get upstaged/shelved by the b5m release. I saw the new B44/shorty chassis two weekends ago and heard him say that it only took him about two days to design. Looked awesome, on and off the track, and was very well thought out.

(Honestly, what I was most interested in was why he had the Poynting vector written on the bottom of his mid motor chassis at the worlds?)

Maybe his chassis is part of the update meaning if u dont want the whole kit get the chassis top decks and motor plate and u have the next gen b44 with a shorty pack

Cuz I can see the price of the kit well over 450 if they do shorty and saddle setups

I don't see Ae updating the car this much. It's a class that's making a comeback but not sure they are selling enough cars to do a new platform.

Jason

Did you get a chance to hold it? It weighed a lot less than my car.

Jason

I see Ae being smart, they need more time to bring a whole new wheeler to market.

A .3 can help them compete against the more modern designs available , gives Ae racer's something to fight with while Ae continues developing the B54..

Exactly, so I doubt we will see a major chassis change from AE. I'd like to hear soom from them. I was actually planning on ordering the schelle chassis this week. But once word came out of the discontinue I decided to hold off and see what happens

Why can't the B44 design compete against more "modern" platforms? It's the defending champion.

The defending champion's car, is not the same car that is being sold today. Hence why I think the next incarnation of the B44 will be the "worlds edition".

And I would highly recomend the Shelle chassis to anyone that's on the fence. It's guaranteed to be better than any design AE comes out with (which will more than likely be a rip off of Kurts original Avid design since that's the chassis that won the world's and many more races after that)

It is essentially the same car. Still running saddle packs. Still shaft drive. Still has the same suspension geometry and shocks. So maybe the chassis is different. Maybe it's running gear diffs. Big deal. It's the same basic car. Those things have been used options for 25 years.

Well if they do a revamp then I might do a conversion of the parts I want mainly the shorty conversion and v2bb being I just got a .1 for the price of a motor speedo combo

yup you are right....and that fits 100% into how AE has done things over the last 25 years. They very rarely make large changes to platforms...why would the B44 be any different? EVERY running change they have ever made to an existing platform has been nothing more than a "tuning option". This is AE's MO for sure, always has been...why would anyone expect anything different?