Here are the pics from eBay, how it looked to start with:
It looks a bit beat up but actually it had hardly been used the plastic bearings in it looked brand new & apart from the obvious damage was in good shape.
First off I fixed the body with some fibreglass & fitted new a new grill from an extreme, then as it’s so dark all the time this time of year & the new grill had nice holes for it I fitted an ansmann light kit, they are very clever with all the functions of a 1:1 car from a two channel radio!
(Gaffer tape is bodge to hold the wires for now, not to fix the body!)
The old MSC only had one speed, so next I fitted an ESC I liberated from another car & tightened up all the screws that had never been done up fully (I guess a kid made it, I remember how hard they were to do up back when I was 10!).
I wasted no time in taking it out for a test drive, but it was rubbish! Mainly because the tyres weren’t glued & the wheels just spun inside the tyres, I didn’t want to glue the old tyres on so used some honey(!) to temporally stick them. It worked well but then I could see just how bad the fiction shocks & the awful bump steer / steering was. My original modded Blackfoot handed much better…
At least the lights looked good, better in the dark, but the pics are rubbish...
So the proper modds started. I wasted quite a bit of time trying to get the original servo saver to work with no luck so changed to a central direct servo (Like my original BF now has) by just cutting the front plate down & using the old front mount at the back. The servo saver was a bit week, but it was much better than it was & actually went where I wanted! I also found some old oil shocks I had & fitted them as others have using parts of the kings.
The old guard I had left from fitting the new frog part to my original came in handy underneath:
As you can see I also fitted an old 17T double I had, it didn’t make much difference to start with but it still had the plastic bearings in, so I swapped them all out for ball races & was very pleased with how much faster it was then. I thought it was rose tinited glasses thinking back to how much difference they make, but clearly not! Then I remember about the honey in holding the tyres so took them off cleaned the wheels up (the honey as intended was easy to remove!) & fitted some new tyres, was better again then. I bashed it a round quite abit like that it ran well apart from the bump steer.
After a while the bodged up servo saver popped its plastic spring so I got one of these:
I’d already fitted one to my original so I knew they were good with that triple metal spring:
Normal ones tend to not only have week springs but also slop side to side, these have much firmer locating collars that interleave the two halves to stop all unwanted movement:
I used the repair plate from the old servo saver as a reinforcing plate for the new one: But also to drop the in board mounting point of the track rods (steering arms) as much as possible:
This was the first bodged up servo saver with the ball joints higher:
It not much different, but it all helps...
The bump steer (in case you didn’t know) is caused by the track rods (steering arms) following a very different path to the “wish bones” (suspension arms), on full droop they all line up:
But on full compression they are in a very different alignment:
The suspension arms are effectively getting shorter as they come up moving closer in to the chassis, the steering arms are at the same time effectively getting longer as they move to the peak of their arc, so the wheel gains massive tow in.
The upside down servo trick looks like it would help with this, but I don’t think it would be right either, to be correct the inner points need to be in between the suspension mounting points & this just isn’t possible on the blackfoot chassis. Also I don’t like the idea if the steering arms being so exposed down that low so I tried to do my best with it this way up.
The orginal BF has it’s outer upright track rod ends / steering arm mounts much higher up than the Kings new set up, this pic isn’t really at the right angle:
But the ball joints actually line up with the top arm of the suspension, so with the centre servo steering mod the original has no bump steer at all.
I wanted to try and move the kings ball joints up to some how. I ordered some of the longer ball joints from an xtream & uprights from a lunch box, I hoped to be able to just screw them in, but the lunch box uprights were different.
So there wouldn’t have been any steering lock with them
Lunch box upright on the left in this pic:
So I fitted them to the Kings uprights instead:
It was a bit of a pain though as they old ones don’t unscrew so I had to press them out.
Once cleaned up that left quite a big hole inside though:
As the threads weren’t long enough to go right though:
I drilled & tapped them to bolt them on:
I was carful to make sure they still cleared the chassis on full droop:
It’s better now there isn’t any bump steer till ¾ of the way through the suspension travel but still not as good as the original!
(still some tow in on full compression)
I also added some cooling for the motor as I run it in my very steep garden & it was getting very hot. The fan was fixed flush with the heat sync but it turned out the tuned motor had such strong magnets in it they stopped the fans motor running, so I fixed it up further away from the motors magnetic field. It took me a few minutes to work that one out!
I've just picked up this lot for a bargain, so I may be changing over to xtream uprights to fit those nice new hex rims, so maybe I'll get better results with them...
Just as well I got that lot, I think I’ll need it, all this was the result of the first run out:
The steering was so good it instantly flipped and rolled down my big hill, fixed again now but with the servo saver being so tight you have to totally change your driving style – in that the slightest movement on the stick on the TX box & it’s darting all over the place, once I’d got used to it thought it was great. Still not sure it’s any better than my original though!
Lastly anyone know of a different bumper that would fit the King's chassis, that one is so close my nice new chrome bumper on the body gets smacked every time my son gets the controls!
