Associated RC8

Suspension is the most important part of any buggy, without it you would just have a sledge, OK for winter but it would be pretty slow in the summer. The shocks on the RC8 have a 16mm bore which is not in keeping with the new trend of oversized shocks; however they are hard coated giving them that lovely gold colour and have a threaded body to make adjusting the ride height easy. There are 4mm shock shafts which should resist any inclination to bend on hard landings and they too are hard coated gold for a smother shock action before being mounted to the wishbone via 5mm pedestals to add that little more droop.

Most of the adjustments on the car are done with spacers, by swapping them about you can give the RC8 either more or less caster on the front C hubs and on the rear, the spacers also adjust the wheelbase making it easy to change your setup from one track to the next (assuming your driving skills are good enough to feel the changes). Packaged up in the box are different pivot inserts to adjust the anti squat and front upper arm height. There’re so many easy to make setup options, dialling the car to the track shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Teams Associated’s Area 51 have gone to great lengths to make the RC8 light but have furthermore thought about ease of maintance too. On the upper steering plate there’s a hinge point just behind the front shock tower meaning you only undo two bolts to hinge the plate forward allowing you to make changes to the height of the front upper arms, this is good because it removes the need to take the whole upper plate off. On the rear shock tower you can’t get to the upper shock mounting positions because of the rear wing mount, so they’ve placed another hinge point on the bottom of the wing mount. You just undo the two upper bolts and fold the wing mount out the way, genius!

The alterations to the rear wing angle are made at two points, you have a lower adjustment where you can tilt the wing forwards and backward to increase or decrease down force, or you can adjust the actual wing plane forwards or backwards to increase or decrease traction over the rear axle.

You’ll probably be very pleased to hear that AE have used metric hardware throughout this kit which is unusual as AE are American and Americans generally prefer to use imperial screws and parts, one day they will understand that being 22 kilos overweight doesn’t sound as bad as 50 lbs! Making the RC8 easy on the eye is another point Area 51 have addressed as they have etched or machined AE and RC8 on the black 4mm 7075 chassis under the radio box and on the fuel tank just for those blonde moments when you forget what buggy your running. Adding to the ascetics is a sleek carbon fibre centre diff mount and radio tray, both accompanied by blue washers and torque rods.

The smoked plastic anti foaming fuel tank goes along with the dark colour scheme nicely and still allows you to see how much fuel is left in there.

nearly done

As this is a rolling chassis, 90% of the RC8 is built, the diffs come pre-filled with 5k oil in the front, 7k in the middle and 3k in the rear, whilst the shocks have 50wt oil up front and 40wt at the back. And that leaves me with just the final tasks of double checking all the screws are tight and then fitting an engine and the radio gear.

CML, the distributors of the RC8 offer this buggy as a stand alone kit or bundled up with an RB WS7 III and pipe. We just got the kit version here so to ensure it was propelled by something equally as powerful as the RB, I chose to use a Werks B7 Pro which is available from Apex Models, please allow me one plug for them, I do work there after all! With the B7 being a seven port engine it produces all its power higher up the rev range which makes it a perfect match for this lightweight buggy and should ensure some blistering top speed runs!

The RC8 clutch is another new concept from Area 51, you get a Teflon clutch shim to stop the aluminium shoes binding on the flywheel allowing the clutch to engage nice and smoothly. As with most buggies, there’s a three shoe clutch but AE have removed part of the shoe, so installing the three 1.0mm springs is made easier. With the internal gear ratio being close to that of a truggy but with the smaller wheels of a buggy, running a 13T clutch bell would mean that the RC8 would be all revs and no go. So AE supply you with a 16T bell to go with the lower geared diffs which keeps everything in ratio. Mounting the Werks B7 Pro engine to the chassis is done by a two piece mono block mount made from cast aluminium, meaning you can remove the engine by undoing six screws and not have to reset the gear mesh.