The new body and graphics slenderize the MGT. Like the new radio? It’s
Associated’s own FM design. Works
great, too.
Extruded aluminum chassis
The Monster GT chassis is the most unique on
the market today. It’s made out of an extruded,
box-shaped section of aluminum that has been
machined to accept the transmission and diffs.
This is a very strong design and doesn’t require
chassis braces to maintain rigidity. Molded plastic mud guards on the sides keep tire debris out
of the chassis and provide a place to mount the
fuel tank. A padded roll bar made of solid steel
rod provides rollover protection for the engine
and doubles as a handle. The front-mounted
radio tray can be removed as a unit, and you
only have to remove a few screws to do so.
ASSOCIATED AE-50K
ENGINE PERFORMANCE
As its name implies, the MGT 8.0 is powered by an 8.0cc (.5ci) engine, the largest
Associated has ever put in any vehicle.
The AE-50K is based on a helicopter powerplant and uses a side-exhaust instead of a
rear-exhaust port like most other engines.
The internals have been tweaked for car
use, and inside you’ll find standard issue
stuff such as a machined conrod, 3-port
sleeve, ABC construction and a 2-needle
slide carb. This engine has too much compression for a pull-starter, so the A-Team
went with a hand-held shaft starter for the
job. Starting the engine is easy, but I recommend leaving the glow igniter on for a
little while to help keep the engine running
while it warms up. It’s also a good idea to
wait longer than usual before making
adjustments to the carb because there’s a
lot of material to heat up. I made the mistake of tuning my engine a little early and I
ran it a little too lean at first. Once the carb
was tweaked, the engine ran very strong
and held its tune well.
. 50 crank
. 28 crank
. 21
. 28
. 50
The new 8.0cc (.50ci) engine (left)
does not seem a lot larger than the
. 28 it replaces, but look at the internals.
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