Andyrt200

We got a nice early Christmas present today, I’m not sure who was more excited to open the box, my three year old boy or me! I’ve not seen a Clod since I was a teenager when this would have been new, it still looks just as impressive now. I wasn’t sure from the ebay pics but it has the Chevy on the tail gate & badge on the grill so happy with that.

I didn’t really mean to get one, I wanted to out try twin motor driving & have been trying to decide whether to get a new second gear box for my Blackfoot Xtream or just get a Wild Dagger (or one of the others of that stable) for about six months. I was being good & had a fixed budget & had bid & lost on a few Daggers, then this popped up & for no real reason (other than having wanted one for the last 20 odd years) I decide to totally blow the budget out of the window! I’ve not been looking so have no real idea if £135 is a reasonable price for one, but I love it already so don’t mind.









I’m very impressed with the tyres I thought they would be shot like the ones from my original Blackfoot (I had from new) were when I dug it back out. These are very soft with no cracks at all, do you guys think they would be the originals?

It seems to be very complete, apart from the light bar & the cracked screen can any one see anything else missing?

It has got this strange hole:



I think it may have been drilled to get at the servo screw?




It’s had a new MSC fitted, I was wandering why the resistor wasn’t fitted & found the wires weren’t long enough! I’ll be fitting an ESC soon anyway. I just wanted to try it out as standard first. Is there any reason I can’t fit an ESC that worked with a 12T motor directly into those bullet connectors & keep the series / parallel switch? I’d like to still be able to easily slow it down for my boy to drive. It’s one truck that I think really needs a ESC though, the brake function annoys me on the rear wheel drive cars, I preferred the MSC direct reverse, but this thing just forward rolls going into reverse, hopefully a progressive brake will avoid that.  

Then I’ll need to ball race it, I read some where it wasn’t worth ball racing Clods, but I can’t think that’s right is it?

Finally, besides a new paint job, I’ll need to do something about the usual lack of steering from the front wheels (or rears when going backwards), the servo savers look to have been tightened right up all ready, there is no movement in them it just seems to be flex in the rods from the servo & the gear boxes rotating rather than the wheels moving. It’s ok when out in the open it turns eventually, but it’s annoying when trying to crawl up something you need to get it aligned with just right. I don’t really want to go with a servo on the gear box as I’d like to keep it looking standard, any other suggestions?

I fitted some Re Re Frog drive shafts to my classic Blackfoot, but they popped out on the first outing, so I cut a little rubber tubing to act as an O-Ring & stuck it in the diff end, it was better, but still popped out before I’d got through the first pack.

I’m running a locked diff with new BF extreme tyres, so I guess there is quite a bit of strain on the drive shafts. It’s a shame as with this set up it runs very well on soft ground.

I thought I’d check the instructions for the Re Re Frog (should have probably done that in the first place!) & saw it uses two 4mm O-Rings diff side on the Right & just one on the Left, also one at the wheel end for each drive shaft, making a total of 5 O-Rings. The drive cups do stick out different amounts from the gearbox on my Blackfoot so that kind of makes sense, I’m not holding my breath but will try that.

Has anyone else had similar problems?

The thing that confuses me slightly is that the instructions for Subaru Brat show just one O-Ring wheel end of the drive shaft, making a total of just 2 O-Rings. I thought they were the same chassis, with the same trailing arms, that all move the same amount – so why the difference?!

It was sunny once! It's taken me a while to get around to sticking these clips together, but it turned out ok. The quality isn't amazing, it's quite hard filming with your phone stuck to the transmitter & driving at the same time, still I had my little helper...

The Beach is Black Rock Sands in North Wales:


The Truck:
http://www.tamiyaclu...topic=67784&hl=


If you liked the jumps, here are some more, along with a little dog chase!

I completed my BF collection with this:



(Pic from the auction)


I got it as I wanted to see what the differences were to the King & original + it had some nice bits.

I replaced a broken rear upright & stuck the BD body back together with my favourite hot glue & fibreglass matt so I could take it for a spin.




It went well & the old servo saver actually did a fair impression of something that actually worked!

But the suspension mount broke so I fixed that by sanding the back off & making an ally plate to go on:




Only when I when to re-fit it I noticed the rear was also broken:




So I’ve stripped it now as I wanted the chassis for my original, I snapped a body mount off that & this doesn’t need then so I’ll swap them over.

It came with a few nice wood screw repairs as well as the hop ups!




Apart from looks is there any reason I cant replace that with a Frog re-re part?

Any how on with the hop ups, I think these shocks are a Tamiya part?




The wheels are nice (although my pic is rubbish), chromed King wheels an original Tamiya part?




What intrigues me the most is this under guard & bumper, I don’t think they are Tamiya are they?:






The guard looks like an early version of the re-re frog part, it has holes where it would screw into the frog/ org BF bumper mount so it’s not really for the SBF, it looks like it’s been cut off at the front, maybe it had a bumper attached to it at one time?


The drive shafts are nice too I bent some of my Kings so they will be good, the cups look a little different too:




So even though it’s a but broken I’m quite pleased with my purchase

Nothing exactly ground breaking, but I thought someone may like looking at the pics…

As I got it hardly used & unpainted:




A spare shell I had:



Some other wheels, but the tyres were too small for gearing & the arches.




Advertised as fully ball raced, I asked him if he’d done the gear box & got a blank look back!

So I finished ball racing it & fitted with some oil shocks it was very good:




I decide to try brushless out with it for the first time – amazing! Only I then managed to break one the front upper wish bone / suspension arm mounts. So I ordered the alloy damper mount thinking that would solve my problem, but when it turned up I found it still needed the original suspension mounts to be inplace (obvious really) so I had to get a new ones, but the alloy plate will strengthen them. Only trouble was it needs longer shocks so I had to dig about to find some, I need to get four silver ones so I can fit the rear shock mount & the light blue shocks look rubbish! They do give more suspension travel, but the problem with that is the front tyres catch on the proper body on hard landings now!






I tried a bit of strengthening where I found my King BF broke, just a bit of plastex in the middle:



At the front I snapped the usual lower corner off on one of the first outings, so stuck that back on with plastex but filled the bolt holes with plastex too & bonded the grill in with fibreglass (fibreglass can be just about removed if needed, plastex can't with out cutting). It spreads the load evenly over the body from the grill when you hit something, when there is just the screw the hole weakens the body & puts all the force in that week spot though the bolt.




Looks much better with out the bolt in the arch too:




I sprayed it with Tamiya metallic black & clear over that but wasn’t very happy about the lack of shine, it’s not much shiner than the original plastic finish. Shame as the other solid colour Tamiya paints I’ve used had a lovely deep shine.

The roll bar was the last mod, I find they always snap in the middle, for my king I tried gluing a screw into it:




But it came out after a few hard rolls, so for this xtream I’m trying plastex reinforced with fibreglass matt, the plastex bonds to the plastic much better & fibreglass matt give it real strength:





I decided to go with the original decals because the truck looked a little bland with out & I think they help mask the mismatching wheel base by loosing the definition at the back of the rear arches:




I sanded the spikes of the tyres as the on road performance was rubbish, it's much better now & can still get up damp grass hills.







I’ve always loved my original Blackfoot & thought the wheel base issue would really put me off, but actually with the decals it’s not too bad, I still don’t like its bland chassis though.

It is very nice to be able to take it out for a good bashing with out it breaking on every outing though, unlike the original! I think the flexible body mounts the xtream has help a lot with that, I’ve just tried to fix the other little problems.

So far so good with lots of heavy barrel rolls down the hill all I’ve broken is a spot light off the roll bar, that is one place it’s worse than the original, they could move freely round out of the way on the original these stop half way then snap off