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Yes another toy grade conversion, or perhaps semi hobby grade conversion. A few weeks ago I picked up an interesting looking buggy on Ebay, a Radio Shack Black Wolf. From a first glance it looked very similar to the Nikko F10 chassis, which has a fair few fans here and is itself very similar to the Grasshopper. The cars are 540 powered, take a 7.2v pack and are fully proportional, so are pretty nice from the off, but can be improved with some tweaking. The car also came with a spare gearbox, body, tires and a few other parts, enough to potentially make two cars using some spares I had. I wanted to make something for my Nephew, so for £30 it seemed like a good deal. I When the car arrived it became apparent that although it was based on the F10 they were not made with the exact same moulds. Nikko and Taiyo produced many cars for Radio Shack and Tandy. Some of the cars are exactly the same, perhaps with a different body or stickers, but others like this one are very close, but not identical. However the Black Wolf and F10 are close enough that I should be able to swap parts from one to another without too much issue. So, on to the build: I started with the gearbox first. The good thing about these cars is that they take modern ball bearings, so I was able to replace all the nylon bushings with proper ball bearings, including inside the gearbox. The car takes 11x5x4 and 10x5x4 bearings, and they really make a difference compared to 30 year old bushings! I then replaced the old motor with a 540 Silver Can - the Tamiya pinions attached to them were identical, so that was a plus too. Looking at the gearbox I noticed some damage. There is a tab that stops the gearbox rotating too far back, either on acceleration or when the car leaves the ground. The shocks on this car are simple springs and work under compression, but simply pop open under tension offering no resistance. This means every time the car jumps or accelerates this tab bangs hard against the back of the chassis. This was clearly a serious design flaw as both tabs were cracked and lifting up, allowing dirt into the gearbox as well as failing to really work. I tried to glue them, but a glued plastic part is rarely as strong, and kept on popping off so I gave up. I then decided to glue again, clamp for ages and then trim off the tab completely You can see here where the tab was on the left hand side of the the pivot. I've tried to hide it, but can only do so much. The main thing is it is sealed. So, this was all fixed, but now when you lift up the car the rear end falls out and the springs pop out. A simple solution involved using an oven hob to get the rear springs hot. These were then pushed into the red cups, partially melting them and making a very strong bond. This means the springs are now attached to both ends, meaning they can work under tension too. Now the rear end is attached to the car, even if you pick it up. Next step, onto the electronics...