TeamAssociated B4

The A-Teams Latest Warbird

Words: George M. Gonzalez


A prototype of Team Associated's B4 1/10-scale electric buggy debuted at the 2002 International Model & Hobby Expo, and the editors of Radio Control Car Action agreed that it was the most monumental new car there. The B4 is an all-new design from the ground up; it shares only a few parts with its predecessor, the B3.

According to Team Associated, the B4 is its most tunable buggy ever and is easier to adjust and maintain than the previous RC10 series buggies. In addition, the new car has the lowest possible center of gravity (CG) and has fewer parts than the B3. We'll have to wait until Associated releases the B4 in final production trim to give you a full "Track Test," but right now, we can give you the bench-top B4 experience.

The B4 uses the same hard-anodized front shocks as its predecessor, but they're mounted behind the shock towers to lower the car's overall CG (much like those on the famous prototype stealth car that Masami Hirosaka drove when he won the IFMAR World Championship in 1989). This is the first Associated buggy to feature a molded front shock tower; previous models used a fiberglass or graphite front shock tower. Both the front and rear shock towers have three shock-mounting positions, and the suspension arms have two mounting options.

The shock bottoms aren't secured to the front of the suspension arms as they are on the B3; instead, they're mounted on the inside of the arms. This allows the shock bottoms to be mounted more securely, and at the same time, it greatly strengthens the arms. The B4 also has more front nose clearance than the B3. The front mini bumper is nearly 1/2 inch behind the front tires. In a nose-dive situation, the front tires—not the bumper—will contact the track surface, so the buggy will recover with fewer hang-ups.

The B4's molded-plastic-composite chassis doesn't have the same separate aluminum nose and rear suspension plates as the B3 buggy. Instead, this new chassis extends all the way to the front of the vehicle and has a built-in 25 degrees of kick-up.

The rear pivot block has molded-in rear-suspension-arm mounts, and an interchangeable suspension-arm mount on the pivot block in front of the rear suspension arms allows rear toe-in adjustment. Rear anti-squat can be adjusted by installing washers under the suspension-arm mounts. The battery, motor and steering servo are mounted low on the chassis to further lower the CG, and that improves cornering speed and makes the buggy more stable through jumps and bumps.

The front bulkhead and the bellcrank steering system are attached to a small upper deck that interlocks with the chassis. Just remove a few screws, and you'll be able to remove the front suspension and steering system as a complete assembly for maintenance.

The B4 is also the first Associated buggy since the original RC10 to come equipped with trailing-axle steering blocks. The optional in-line steering blocks allow you to alter the buggy's steering characteristics while maintaining the correct axle and Ackerman settings. To adjust the length of the camber rod, there are two camber-rod mounting options on the caster blocks and front bulkhead. Additionally, to keep bump-steer to a minimum through the entire range of suspension travel, the steering drag link and steering blocks are on same plane.

 

Roll-center geometry can be adjusted by installing washers under the vertically mounted ball studs on the inside of the rear upper links. For camber-rod length adjustment, a couple of mounting positions for the inner ball studs have been molded into the chassis. The transmission is keyed to the chassis, and it's interlocked with the rear shock tower for greater rigidity. The trick, molded rear wing mount doubles as a transmission brace. Molded spacers installed on the body posts allow three wing-angle settings: 0, 3 and 6 degrees. Additionally, the motor is mounted lower and farther inward on the chassis to keep the center of gravity low.


SPECIFICATIONS
MANUFACTURER: Team Associated

MODEL: B4 Team Kit

ESTIMATED PRICE: $179.99

DIMENSIONS:
Wheelbase: 10.72 in. (272mm)
Width: 9.875 in. (251mm)


WEIGHT
Total, with electronics (as shown):
54 oz. (1,531g)


CHASSIS
Type: molded semi-tub
Material: composite plastic


DRIVE TRAIN
Type: 3-gear sealed transmission
Transmission ratio: 2.6:1
Slipper clutch: dual disc


AXLES Type: MIP CVDs


DIFFERENTIALS
Ball type


BEARINGS
Rubber-sealed


SUSPENSION
Lower H-arms with turnbuckle
camber links


SHOCKS
Hard-anodized aluminum body
with foam volume compensator


WHEELS
Type: one-piece plastic
Dimensions (F/R): 2.2x.875 in./ 2.2x1.4 in.


TIRES
Type (F/R): Pro-Line M3-compound
Wide Body/M3-compound Bow Tie

Cliff Lett Cliff's notes
SKUNK WORKS ENGINEERING
Designing and manufacturing as complex a project as the B4 requires a team of talented designers and engineers. Cliff Lett is well known as the Team Associated designer, and although he heads the A-team's engineering department, he doesn't go it alone. Torrance DeGuzman has been part of the team for the past three years, and he played a major role in the development of the Nitro TC3. Kurt Wenger is the most recent addition to the design department, and he brings his background in aerospace engineering to the Associated brain trust. We asked Cliff to answer a few questions on behalf of his crew about the B4's development.

RC CAR ACTION: What were your goals when you fired up the CAD software and began the design phases?

Cliff Lett: A lot has changed since the B3 buggy was introduced. At that time, most racers wanted a car that handled well on bumpy tracks and needed fewer adjustments. These days, most tracks have hard-packed, blue-groove-type surfaces, and racers like to have many tuning options. Our first goal was to design the most adjustable buggy to date. Lowering the car's overall CG was extremely important. Most weight comes from the battery, motor, steering servo and shocks, so these components had to be lower on the chassis. We also wanted the buggy to have fewer parts, to be easier to maintain and to have rear wheels that would be compatible with other manufacturers' wheels.

RCCA: Which of the B4 features are you particularly proud of?

CL: We're proud of the entire car, but the B4 is just so much easier to work on. There are fewer parts, and all of the screws and vertical ball studs are easy to reach; that makes maintenance and tuning a breeze. All of the major components interlock with one another to form a solid structure. By taking out a few screws, you can remove the front suspension as a complete assembly.
The same goes for the transmission and rear suspension. A lot of attention to detail went into the B4. Even the body was designed with our Solid Works software.

RCCA: I understand that a few Team drivers have raced the B4 at club races; how does it hold up in battle?

CL: Very well. Travis Amezcua TQ'ed and won at SoCal Raceway the first time he raced the car. If you know anything about SoCal Raceway, you'll know that racing there on a Saturday night is like competing at the Nationals; many of Southern California's top drivers race there. Other drivers have similar success stories.

RCCA: Will other versions of the B4 buggy be available?

CL: For the time being, we will offer a B4 Team Kit that includes MIP CVD axles, hard-anodized Team shocks, rubber-sealed bearings and Pro-Line M3-compound Bow Tie rear tires and Wide Body front tires. A Factory Team Kit may follow, and we're discussing other variations as well.

RCCA: Any word on the possibility of a T4 racing truck and a nitro truck after that?

CL: I'd be lying if I told you that we weren't considering a racing truck. Of course, we designed the B4 chassis with a racing-truck application in mind. We'd be fools if we didn't. I don't have any details because that project is so far down the line. A new gas truck? I think that you're getting ahead of yourself, George. Don't make me slap you!

 
Right: the B4's new 2.6:1 reduction Stealth tranny uses the same bulletproof ball diff as the RC10GT. The transmission assembly has been optimized into an ultra-compact package that is now an integral part of the chassis and suspension structure. The dual-disc slipper clutch features octagonal slipper pads and identical front and rear slipper plates to lower the parts count. The lighter slipper plates reduce the rotating mass.

Spur-gear changes require slipper clutch disassembly because the spur gear is sandwiched between two pressure plates. The spur gear has octagonal recesses on both sides, and the slipper pads are slightly oversize; they snap into the center of the spur gear, eliminating the need for finicky hand alignment. The rear motor guard is now made of plastic, so it rebounds from impacts and is lighter than the aluminum parts of previous RC10 buggies.

Left: the B4 has raised chassis sides for increased cornering clearance. Raising the sides also reduces the chassis' "footprint," so there's less contact with the track if the chassis scrapes a jump face or bottoms out on a landing.
The rear suspension arms are angled upward at their outer ends where they meet the rear wheel hubs, and the rear shock tower is mounted low. This not only lowers the car's CG, but it also allows you to use slightly shorter 1.18-inch rear shocks without sacrificing suspension travel (the shorter shocks weigh less, too). The four suspension arms are the same length, and the suspension hinge pins are captured so that no E-clips are required. The hinge pins are made of a stronger steel so they can be machined to a smaller diameter to reduce their weight without sacrificing strength.

The rear hub carriers have two camber-link mounting options. Aluminum wheel supports are mounted on the drive axles behind the wheel pin. For subtle wheelbase adjustments, slide the hub carriers forward or backward on the hinge pins and rearrange the hub spacers. The B4 has a slightly longer wheelbase than the B3, and that increases its stability and brings it to the maximum legal length. To increase traction and push the B4 out to the maximum ROAR-legal width, the rear suspension has longer MIP CVD axles.


Waiting to take the wheel
It looks as if the B4 has all the features that racers could ask for—more. This buggy is more adjustable and easier to work on; it features a lower CG, and if looks are factored in, it's meaner than any other Team Associated buggy. We haven't wheeled the B4 yet, but Associated's team drivers tell us that it was worth the wait. We're looking forward to finding out for ourselves.


Source guide
Team Associated (714) 850-9342; teamassociated.com.


Radio Control Car Action Car of the Year '05

Team Associated RC10B4 Stealth

Words: George M. Gonzalez

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With so many significant new cars released this year, choosing the Radio Control Car Action Car of the Year wasn't easy. We considered many new 1/8-scale buggies, 1/10-scale electric and nitro-powered touring cars and a slew of RTR vehicles as possible finalists, but the candidates quickly funneled down to one car we could all agree on: the Team Associated RC10B4 Stealth.

The B4 has been available only for a short time, but it has already caused quite a stir in electric 2WD off-road circles. It won the Expert Mod Buggy class at the Cactus Classic on its very first outing, and it finished in second place at the 2nd Annual Team Losi Off-Road Championships a few weeks later. The B4 buggy is definitely off to a good start, but that's only a small part of why we chose it as the 2003 RC Car Action Car of the Year. Read on to get the full story and some big news directly from our sources at Team Associated.

PERFORMANCE
The B4 won the tough Expert Mod Buggy class at the Cactus Classic on its first outing, and it has a consistent A-main presence in all levels of races from the Saturday afternoon club scene to annual off-road championships. Many dedicated Team Associated loyalists have reported faster lap times after retiring their B3 buggies and taking control of a B4, and you'll find strings of posts that praise the new Stealth buggy in the various RC chat rooms and on bulletin boards.

MORE TUNING, LESS MAINTENANCE
The B4 is much easier to build, tune and maintain than any of the previous RC10 buggies. Team Associated has always included excellent assembly instructions, and the B4's are the best to date. Wrenching on the B4 is a breeze because the front and rear suspension assemblies can be removed in minutes by loosening a few screws, and all of the car's major components are easy to access. The vertical ball studs are easy to reach, and you don't have to disassemble one component to be able to access hard-to-reach screws. The bombproof RC10GT ball diff and the large-surface-area, dual-pad slipper clutch ensure that the tranny will last a long time, and the differential will get plenty of track time between rebuilds.

FACTORY SUPPORT
The B4 has been available for only a few short months, yet a bunch of factory and aftermarket hop-ups and tuning parts are already available for it. Team Associated has a huge distribution, which means that stock replacement parts are readily available at your local hobby shop and mail-order outlet. Setup information, building tips, accessory listings and customer support are only a click away at teamassociated.com.



B4 features

1. Composite-plastic chassis

2. Adjustable battery placement

3. Equal-length suspension arms

4. Captured hinge pins

5. Compact 2.6-reduction stealth tranny

6. Hard-coated Team shocks

7. Composite-plastic front shock tower

8. Low CG front shock mounting

9. Vertically mounted ball studs

10. Adjustable wing mounts

11. Integrated front bulkhead and upper deck

12. Pro-Line M3 Holeshot and Wide-rib tires

13. Dual-disc slipper clutch

14. Trailing front axles

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THE ORIGINAL RC10: A LEGEND IS BORN
The original RC10 set the standard for 2WD off-road electric racing in the mid-'80s with its fully independent and tunable suspension, 6-gear transmission with an external ball differential and trademark gold-anodized-aluminum tub chassis. Many variations of the original RC10 buggy were introduced throughout the late '80s and early '90s, including the first "Team" and "Worlds" cars, but other than giving birth to the 3-gear transmission, the RC10 underwent no sweeping changes until 1995.

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B2: THE FIRST STEALTH CAR
The B2 made its dramatic debut at the '95 IFMAR Worlds in Japan. Five of the 26 prototypes that had been sent to Japan made it to the A-main, and Matt Francis, who drove for Team Associated at that time, went on to TQ and win the event. The B2 represented several "firsts" for Team Associated: it was the first RC10 buggy that was designed using computer-assisted-design (CAD) software, the first official production buggy to carry the Stealth badge and the first Team Associated buggy to have a composite-plastic chassis.

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B3: THE WARBIRD GETS
NEW ARTILLERY

The B3 was released in '98, and although it was based on the previous B2 design, it sported many new features that made it more competitive. It offered more tuning options than the B2, and it was the first RC10 buggy with Associated's "Quadra Symmetrical" suspension, which means that the front and rear suspension arms are equally long, and the front and rear inboard hinge pins are inline with each other. The B3 remains a popular buggy to this day; you picked it as the winner of the "Readers' Choice Awards" for favorite electric buggy.

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B4: THE NEW STEALTH CAR
The new B4 is a leaner and meaner Stealth buggy. It's designed to be as nimble on a smooth blue-groove track as it is on a bumpy track, thanks to the highly tunable suspension. Although performance was the number-one goal, the designers made the B4 much easier to build and maintain—an added bonus.

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After collecting the hardware for Car of the Year at the RCX show, we pulled chief designer Cliff Lett aside to answer a few Q's about his experiences while designing the B4.

Radio Control Car Action: The B4 is an awesome buggy. Did you face any major challenges during the design process?

Cliff Lett: We encountered numerous design challenges in the B4's development, but our number-one goal was for it to have an extreme range of tunability. The B3 required a very aggressive driving style that did not cater to many of our customers or to the new generation of high-grip, blue-groove tracks. We wanted a car that could be tuned to handle like the B3 when necessary, but also be tunable enough for extreme high grip. This was not an easy task, but I think we got it right.

RCCA: Were there any unusual or funny stories that you can share about the prototype stages?

CL: Every project is filled with surprises, hurdles to overcome and funny situations. In the early days of the B4's development, several prototypes were being tested at SoCal Raceway. I think we had a total of 12 cars, including a standard B3 and a Triple-X. When we finished assembling all of them, we needed to paint the bodies. All we had around the shop was a can of red paint, so we painted all the cars red with black windows. After a few weeks, there were Web forum threads created that mentioned the mysterious red car being driven by Associated's team drivers at SoCal. No one could figure out which car we were driving, all because we only had one can of paint!

RCCA: The B4 has been a long time coming; is it everything you hoped it would be?

CL: As with any project that leaves this office and heads to production, I am never quite ready to give it the big OK without worrying about something. I have tried to train our engineers to be extremely detail-focused in everything they do. The payoff for this shows in products like the B4, where the entire project flows together. So far we are ecstatic about the car's performance and can't wait to apply everything we have learned to the T4.

RCCA: Do you think that the B4 will have an influence on the Team Associated racing teams' performance at the next IFMAR Worlds?

CL: I truly hope that the B4 helps our team perform well at the IFMAR Worlds in October. But regardless of which team is fortunate enough to win, I hope our customers will continue to enjoy the B4, and we are committed to providing them with the highest-performance, top-quality products in the future.


NEWS FLASH
TEAM ASSOCIATED
B4 RTR IN THE WORKS

You heard right—Team Associated will offer a ready-to-run (RTR) version of the B4! The B4 RTR will include Team Associated's newest Jaguar radio system, an LRP speedo and a Reedy mod motor.


 

 

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