Originally Posted by Jason B
What happened? What soured your feelings on the TC4?
The TC3 was a great car, but it was designed in 1998. I think a little more is required than an update to compete with todays cars. The rest of the world has evolved, Associated hasn't.
My specific issues were trying to get the TC4 to turn in and rotate. Same problem running the car on both asphalt and carpet. After days of testing on both, I could get the steering response and rotation that I liked, but at the sacrafice of forward bit. It was slower being loose than it was with a slight push. Growing up driving only AE offroad cars, it was very unnatural for me to drive a car like that. It was just uncomfortable.
The thing the newer cars do well is to have the balance of steering and forward bite.
I didnt realize how horrible the build quality of the TC4 is until I built some of the newer cars. I was used to the old days of offroad where you had to do quite a bit of fitting to get the cars right (you build an Associated with a dremel and a Losi with a bag of shims
). My Shumacher was very pleasant to work with and my T2 is an absolute dream.