This afternoon, I’m scrolling through Facebook and I see a post declaring that Team Associated’s new 1/28 AWD car, the TC28, is already a flop in terms of customer support. I keep reading and I learn that the car only works with Team Associated wheels. I found this hard to believe because wheels at this scale work pretty much with all cars unless it has something to do with offsets or something like that. But no, that’s not the case with the TC28 as its CVD axle is a unique size.
As you can see, the rectangular hole in the white, TC28 wheel is quite a bit larger than the yellow, standard AWD wheel. Now, you could enlarge the hole a bit and jam it on the TC28 axle but you run the risk of having a wheel that is out of balance.
The first thing I thought was to just swap out the CVD since they’re pretty much universal across all 1/28 AWD cars. Unfortunately, you can’t do this either as, in their infinite wisdom, Team Associated has decided to change the design so that their CVDs work with larger, 4x7x2mm bearings instead of the 3x6x2mm bearings found on most other cars.
The only reasonable explanation I can think for this is that its for increased durability but it goes against years of experience from other manufacturers. Not to mention, it requires racers to buy into the Team Associated ecosystem and buy their wheels where there are many other options on the market.
I love AWD racing and I really thought about buying a TC28 and writing a review for this website since it had things like gear diffs and sway bars that looked like they actually worked. Now though, after seeing what they’ve done with the wheels, I am going to have to pass.
Team Associated, you need to do better. You may be the king at larger scales but your time in the 1/28 market is going to be short if continue down this path.