Originally Posted by Yub, yub, cmdr!
My next question is:
do belt drive cars really get trashed up running on unprepped?
Yes, the ball diffs on belt drive cars get really gritty unless the drivtrain is enclosed, depending on what part of the country you live in. The only <edit> THREE CARS WITH BELT DRIVE <edit> I know of with enclosed drivetrains were the Losi Street Weapon, XXX-S and Yokomo MR4-TC (all defunct).
The $99 TC4 sounds like a no-brainer to me. If Associated is still selling the TC4 RTR and NTC3, then I would assume they will still have a reasonable amount of parts support for the near future. You might just want to pick up a spare set of a-arms and mabybe some diff parts or spare outdrives.