I certainly understand where the previous tamiya member is coming from - for the money nothing beats the Stampede. However, putting one together can be an excercise in frustration as it WILL NOT assemble as nicely as either of the Tamiya vehicles. Furthermore, you will quickly realize that the quality and feel of the plastics is several notches below that of a Tamiya.
Having built and run all three of these vehicles (Stampede, King Blackfoot, and Wild Dagger) I think it's safe to say that out of the box the Stampede will be the fastest and best handling of all three trucks.
But I, like many people around here are hund up on Tamiya, so we'll talk a little about the Dagger and the 'Foot. The biggrst different between these two trucks is that the WD if 4WD and the KB is 2WD. As well, the WD comes with a light polycarbonate body and the KB comes with a hard plastic body - very nice, but it makes the truck very top heavy and prone to rolling. I could not believe the improvement in performance I got by installing a polycarbonate body on my KB - night and day!
The WD is a more modern design than the KB. While the KB has been improved over the original, it still has an archaic front suspension that has about 1/2 the suspension travel of the Stampede. The plastic friction shocks don't help the matter, either. I feel the WD, even though it too comes with friction shocks (my biggest "beef" with Tamiya vehicles), has a more fluid suspension, even if the travel is still very limited.
Out of the box the KB might be slightly faster, only because it has less gears and less weight. It will cost much less to install bearings into the KB (the WD takes 24 compared to 12 I think for the KB) Furthermore motor upgrades with the KB will be much cheaper as it has 1 motor compared to 2 for the WD.
So, if you can get a ploycarbonate body, a few bearings and some nice Duratrax gold anodized aluminum shocks for your KB, it would be a very nice truck.
Or you could save yourself a pile of money and get the Stampede, which will likely waste your son's WD out of the box. But that would be so very un-Tamiya wouldn't it? jwc
