Team Associated B5.6 Review.

6, what b5.6 associated never made a b5 point anything! What are you talking about so this car is a little experiment. I’Ve got going on here again from new brunswick old school tracks. I’Ve got my own backyard track. Our tracks are 100 natural, hired a bobcat tear off the lawn, destroying my home’s resale value, but whatever uh that’s not important. What is important is i got my own track and then that track is completely natural. Pour off the sod what’s underneath is is what i is, what i have to work with so, needless to say, the new cars that hit the market these days being mid motor, are designed for the high bike tracks, primarily located in the united states, where the surfaces Is man made not natural, it’s, it’s, it’s treated with uh additives and chemicals and all kinds of crazy stuff to bring the grip way up, like i’m confused, i race on carpet with tires that have pins on them, but people race on clay, with slicks back in My day slicks were for on road, not off road, but whatever we evolve, we adapt move on. Here, though we haven’t evolved. Our tracks are stuck in the 80s and 90s and that’s how we like it, damn it, but the car manufacturers um don’t, produce cars to suit our needs, so we do our best to adapt the cars that we have. For example, my b6 to b6.2d came with the layback gearbox through that in the microwave, then the garbage, then the blender then back to the garbage and bought a four gear stand up.

The four gear stand up, gets the motor up and as far back as possible, without becoming a rear motor car. This car is a rear motor car it’s, a b5 kinda. The b5 is team associated its last production, rear motor car um. This and the b5m were available at the same time. What you’re looking at here is a car that i built using a b5 m to b5 conversion kit, so shout out to hobby hobby for having the last one available on planet earth. It sat there for quite a while and i hummed, and had and talked to my buddy jesse about whether or not i should do it and we went back and forth and then i think at one time we decided no don’t bother and then bother. So here we are, i bothered so what i did was i didn’t have a oh. I had a b5m shuttle to jesse again um that i ended up selling. So when i had the b5m i looked at this kit and then i decided to go another way. This conversion kit, i decided to go another way and uh time went by about a year. I decided to get that conversion kit and all the parts that were supposed to be on the b5m that you would use to complete the conversion kit from b5m to b5. Instead of using b5m parts like caster blocks and steering blocks and stuff, i decided to replace those parts with b6 parts, so that’s, why? I call this a b5.

6 and also Music. I don’t know if i should call them out by name, because i don’t want them to get flooded with help requests from other people with too much time on their hands that want to do obscure projects. But there is a pro who will remain nameless from australia, whose name rhymes with monday um helped me out a lot with this. With this project i mean he’s got a facebook page, ask ray monday, so obviously he’s open to you asking for help anyway, um one couple of things that he helped me learn about was that some of the team associated suspension arms have built in sweep and some Don’T and the new b6.2, the arms don’t have built in sweep the sweep is actually built into the hubs, which makes sense if you stop and think about it for a second b6.1, the arms are actually labeled left and right. When you get into b6.2 the arms aren’t labeled, the hubs are labeled uh, yeah right there you can see what am i doing here: focus uh, an l on the hub and yet it’s on the right hand, side of the car. So that was the most important thing that ray tipped me off to is that the sweep is in the hubs, not the arms, and so the back of the car here has b6.2 arms and b6.2 hubs. The reason why i’m running the left hub on the right side of the car and the right hub on the left side of the car is because there’s already sweep built in to the car being a rear motor car.

It was designed to have inherent sweep built in automatically sweep or toe whatever so ray figures that if um i was to use the hubs on the correct sides, it would actually be too much sweep and would be counterproductive and work against the car. So it’d be like running five degrees of toe when three degrees would do all right, so um, what’s, b5 and what’s, not so looking at the front here, the shock tower is still b5. Now it came in flat or gull and i believe the standard was flat and so i’ve got flat arms flat gull tower, like the the the crust of the earth, won’t crack it’s. True, if i run a gull tower with flat arms but being um make pretend ocd. I choose to not mix my towers on my arms if the tower’s flat, rather, if the arms are flat, i run a flat tower now. A main has a nice carbon fiber version of this tower that i’m, looking at purchasing to put on this car just for no particular reason other than its carbon fiber and cool um, i’m still running a b5 25 degree, uh bulkhead, i’m running the b5 plastic brace Uh i had an aluminum brace. I have an aluminum bulkhead. I have two aluminum bulkheads. Actually, this one is really cool. This one comes from uh exotec and it is 25 degrees and even though it’s skeletonized, like cut out here, it’s still it’s, not as heavy as the associated one um.

I have an associated one that came on a used car that i bought that’s 30 degrees. So if you do run a 30 degree, you got to remember to run zero caster inserts otherwise you’ll end up having a kick up angle of uh 35, which i think is uh excessive. But i could be totally wrong because that’s something yet that i’ve not learned about too too much i mean just. I can regurgitate what the back of the manual says, but i trust that if you got this far, you know how to read and can figure it out for yourself, but kick up angle. The angle of the front of the arm in relation to the back of the arm – and it has to do with the initial steering i believe, don’t quote me on that i’m – mostly making this stuff up all right, so uh shocks i put on kashima’s. Of course not because they, i noticed a difference, they just look cool uh, let’s, see. Okay. So just like my pro se10, we got six series. Caster blocks, steering blocks, um Music, aluminum axles for the front, and you can see here. I’Ve got the three millimeter caster hat bushing at the top, so i can bring my steering block and my axle all the way down, which is supposed to increase, steering um. Speaking of steering these angled ball cups, the only car i’ve seen so far that the manual calls for them to be used is the four wheel drive.

The reason why i chose to use them on this b5.6 is because the angle coming off of the steering rack is quite steep, and so what this does is this helps keep this the turnbuckle itself more parallel to the arm, the the air front, suspension arm so We’Ll see how it turns with these um it’s, not a big deal to swap these out, but i you know, after having a conversation with a buddy of mine about uh, uh, b5 or b4, i can’t remember that he had that he had some some weird, some Weird steering geometry issues: i thought that these angled cups would help clean that up, so we’ll find out for sure on the track. If i need those or not um, of course, v6 steering arms same idea, the b5 arms don’t have as much versatility for adjustment as the b6 um exotec aluminum steering rack and team associated belt cranks savox servo. Nobody cares. Every car has a servo that’s, not what this is about now, uh, the back here, aluminum chassis brace. Unfortunately, i don’t have aluminum c block, so i’ve got the kit c block that we talked about in the other video that is um by default. Three degrees of toe and two degrees, anti squat. I would prefer four degrees of toe two degrees of any squat. I think is going to be okay, i think the d block is aluminum and it does have the inserts now.

The inserts for the d block are very straightforward: those pills they’re not like the six series pills, they got an arrow on them and the arrows either point inboard or outboard, and the suggestion from ray was to have the arrows point. In with that 3.2, i will of course test flip them i’m, also going to test flipping the the hubs. Once i get the car in the track and it’s like broken in, because all the parts are new and stuff and i’m going to run it for a couple of battery packs and um before making any setup changes. Just give all the parts time to settle in and make friends play nice together. Then i’ll start working on some some some some adjustments, if there’s, nothing like really weird, if i don’t need to move shock position or change role, sensors and stuff. Basically, what i’m saying is, after i get the card out, then i’ll swap these d block inserts around to see if it improves performance or not by producing more traction and uh, better handling and i’ll. Also swap the hubs and see what that does. You know it’s going to provide more traction, but at the expense of speed, probably so too much toe can actually work against you um what else we got going on that’s b, so uh the gearbox that came with the b5m to b5 conversion? Again, it is interchangeable with a pro se10 or a dr 10 gearbox, but not identical, and that gearbox is made differently on the inside and the top shaft for the b5 does require a spacer, and i didn’t have that.

I had internal parts for uh. Well, i had a whole second pro c10 gearbox, because i bought a used pro c10 to uh scourge scrounge. Some of the aftermarket hop up parts off of it for this project and the other project. So this gearbox is off of a used pro c10 um. It has a gear diff, the both my pro c10 and this have gear diffs, the only difference between a b6 gear diff and a b5 sorry baldiff ball, diff it’s the end of the day, it’s monday, both my b 5.6 and my pro c 10.6 have ball. Diffs, the only difference between a 6 series – ball diff and the 5 series ball diff is the out drives. The l drives are not skeletonized like the b6 they’re shaped a little different. I think they’re a different size as well, but if you have all the other parts, all you need is the l drives and you can build a ball diff for your b5 um Music. What else i mean basically it’s a car version of the truck project that i did right and again. The rationale for this is the guys who are on podium all the time. Yes, they’re better drivers, there’s no question, but they also understand a heck of a lot about setup and if they wanted to, they could set up a mid motor car and they have probably in reserve mid motor cars that they’re testing and for the day that they.

Finally, can’t replace the 25 year old parts on their tlr rear motor cars, i’m being facetious they’re, not that old, but tlr has not produced a rear motor car for a while parts will eventually dry up, and so these guys will will eventually have to join the Mid motor gang – and that being said, they’re still running rear motor cars for a reason. Yes, they can drive better than the rest of us, but they’re also running rear motor cars because they’re the easiest to set up for our old school natural tracks. The only reason the car has changed is because the tracks changed well, this is atlanta, canada, we don’t even know elvis, is dead, yet we’re dying to get the internet. So obviously, if we’re, that behind the times we don’t know that uh tracks have changed and we’re still using old school tracks, so what works better on an old school track than an old school car that’s, where we’re at here so that’s. What we’re doing we run on carpet with mid motor stuff and the winning this guys on dirt are running rear motors so um i have four mid motor b6s, so it’s not like i don’t have one um, but i want to give this a go. Um, i’m. Being cautiously optimistic, that’s going to be amazing, i really hope it is, and i have a backup plan if it’s not so i don’t know if v5 always came this way, but the b5 battery is in front of the electronics.

The electronics are at the. As far back in the chassis as possible kind of dumb um, the pro c10, not an issue, the battery goes all the way back against the shock tower here: it’s the electronics, so it messes with your weight, bias you’re not getting as much weight to the back Of the car, as you possibly can now i mean it – is a rear motor. So in theory there should already be enough weight back there. But hey overkill is the right amount of kill right. So how do we get the battery further back without chopping up the chassis? You don’t, you buy another chassis and chop it up stupid question. Only problem i have is uh. This is a hard chassis, so hard stuff is typically meant for high grip, um, and i don’t know if that’s why they did this if they wanted the rear motor car to run better on high grip, so they perhaps a total speculation on my part. They redesigned the chassis to move the battery forward. A little bit put the electronics back, i don’t know, but anyway, before i’m, not cutting up that chassis. I got ta use chassis out of the us and it will get cut off so i’ll just cut the brace out here. The width of the battery move the battery all the way back slide the electronics in the front and robert’s your father’s brother done so um. This is the current newly manufactured, viable rear motor option for associated it takes some doing, but you can still run rear motor cars and newly manufactured rear motor cars.

If you are on the team associated fanboy group, but no, if you want to run rear motor and you want more new stuff, you can do it if you’re a team associated guy or you want to become a team associated guy, because not only does the pro C10 exist, the dr 10 exists, but so does the sr 10. So the sr 10 is a dirt oval car it’s, almost basically a b5 right out of the box. The only thing is it has that wide chassis uses the same chassis as the truck. So if you can find a b5 chassis and you go by the sr 10 tada, you can build one of these and have you know newly produced five series parts or if you’re really foolish, you can buy that sr 10 b5 chassis and then fill it with Six series parts so front arms steering blocks caster blocks all six series rear arms rear hubs are all b6.2 series. Unlike my pro sc 10, my pro c10, i went with b74 hubs because there’s no sweep in them and the arms i use are swept so that’s. Why the hubs are different, so i had this on carpet on saturday just to uh, try and drive it that’s uh, just to break it in just just chomping at the bit to test drive it so hey. You know what it worked like. It was supposed to and it drove on carpet like you, would expect a rear motor car with a ball diff to drive with carpet tires um it’s funny.

There was a double on the track and i could hit the double at will with this, but i couldn’t always land the double perfectly with my b6.2 carpet car kinda i’m. Not sure what to attribute that, to i mean driving this one, i could pull it off. So i understand timing but driving my b6.2 uh. I wasn’t always able to get it, not that not as reliably as the confidence wasn’t there that the car would hold and wouldn’t uh wouldn’t crash on the landing or overshoot or whatever. So somebody me may have actually put a car into the exit um the door straight off the track and into the emergency exit, apparently but it’s, not on video, so it’s, allegedly allegedly it happened, but yeah that’s, it that’s pretty much it. That was the whole purpose of uh.