King Blackfoot body on MST CMX

[Maelstrom 439]

Hi everyone, haven't posted here for ages as I was preoccupied with things not Tamiya.  I have been doing quite a lot of crawling lately and after reaching the limits of my CC01, MF01X and High-Lift I moved on to a Traxxas Trx4 sport. The performance is something else entirely and it is also a very nice build if you get the kit version like I did. 

I still love Tamiya though and so I wanted to combine a nice looking Tamiya body with a chassis that might perform a little better. I have a damaged King Blackfoot body to use and the plan was to try to pair it up with a MST CMX chassis. 

This is how the body began:

[Maelstrom 439]

I seem to have got Flickr to work again, so here are more pics of the body

The front of the wheel arch on the left had broken off so made a clean cut and then I rebuilt it with plasticard and putty

Filled the sunroof, repaired the crack in the bonnet and made a lowered bed

 

[Maelstrom 439]

In the meantime, I built the CMX chassis. Why didn't I get the CFX with the front motor and transmission position? It would actually have made putting  in a scale interior a lot easier. Rcmart had a CMX kit up for $160 with free shipping though, so I went for that. 

For the moment I have installed a Carson poison truck motor with a Hobbywing 1060 ESC and a 20kg metal gear servo. The white things at the front are the provisional front body mounts. 

[Maelstrom 439]

The bed turned out to be too low. It sat on the shock towers and caused the body to sit much too high up. I built a slightly less deep bed and cut holes for the towers. The body hight is much better now and I can cover the tower tips with accessories later on. 

Here you can see the body height 

And this is what the bed looks like at the moment 

I'm planning to include wooden planks to the bed after painting. 

[Kevin_Mc 411]

This is something i plan on doing in the near future so it’s good to know there’s a chassis with the correct wheelbase. It’s looking good so far, i’m interested to see how it turns out. 

[87lc2 2663]

You read my mind!   I have a spare Blackfoot stepside body lying around and ordered the CFX from Atees a few days ago.  Excited for the build, should be a pretty cool little truck.  All of my other crawlers are mostly standard 12.3" wheelbase, it will be nice to have something different.  Going with 1.55 wheels, not sure on tires yet.

Yours looks great, nice job on the bed.   I'm a little worried that the CFX will have the motor mounted too high to get the body low enough to look right.  I went with the CFX because I thought it would be cool to have something different since most truck are mid motor.  I'll definitely be watching your thread, thanks for posting.

[Maelstrom 439]

I think the Blackfoot stepside has more than enough room under the bonnet to fit in the motor, at least I have seen it done on a German crawler forum. You should be able to find some more examples with a bit of a search. 

[87lc2 2663]

I have seen a few with the stepside body and the CFX, but the bodies were all mounted higher than yours, a lot more gap between body and frame.  I'm curious if that was by the builders choice or necessity due to the CFX motor placement.   Guess I'll find out soon enough...

[Maelstrom 439]

The original back bumper was missing from my body so today I worked on building a new one. L-shaped plasticard came in very handy for this. I made a mockup with double sided tape to get the size right, then glued everything, filled the gaps, sanded an added some detail. 

This is what it might look like on the truck 

 

[Maelstrom 439]

This evening, I put a first coat of primer on the body.

 

I ran out of paint before I could get more coats on but the more uniform colour helps me to see if there are any small cracks left to fill in and also allows me to better imagine what it will look like when painted. At the moment, I am thinking of TS10 french blue, with or without TS7 racing white side panels. I also want to do some weathering,, simply because I 've never done it before

Something a little like this. What do you think? 

 

[87lc2 2663]

I think the blue & white would look great, can't wait to see it finished.

[Mad Ax 9312]

I'm loving your plasticard work.  Inspiring, I need to make a bumper like that for one of my 1:14 rigs.

[Maelstrom 439]

2 hours ago, Mad Ax said:

I'm loving your plasticard work. 

Thanks! But if I can do it, it can't be that hard! There are loads of "how to" videos out there with great tips, some absolutely amazing scratch build videos and of course some very inspiring work on this forum. 

[Maelstrom 439]

OK, today I got some paint on the body. 

View from the back

Still needs a clear coat, but I like how the colour combo turned out . Next to come: details and weathering! 

[Maelstrom 439]

Since my last post, I got the lights installed (sorry no fotos yet). At the moment only head- and taillights until I can find a controller for running/brake/reverse lights (any suggestions gladly accepted!) In the meantime, Peter Quill has arrived from China and we both have had a lot of fun getting the nice clean paint job on the truck dirty. 

 

 

I really like the Ford emblem! 

 

[Maelstrom 439]

Another small update: The exterior of the truck is mostly finished now, but when trying to refit the body to the chassis, I noticed that the battery tray was in the way of the front of the body. I removed it and also removed the ESC and receiver, as I wasn't happy with their placement either. I constructed a more permanent front body holder with the original posts, some neodym magnets and styrene card. I also noticed that while the back of the body lined up very well with the rear wheels, the front axle was too far forward. You can see what I mean here

I decided to shorten the links at the front by about 5mm by using m3 rod cut to the right length 

 

[Maelstrom 439]

This improved the wheelbase a lot but it turned out that I had to shorten the drive shaft a little to compensate, otherwise the suspension couldn't be fully compressed. 

 

I improved the look of the links with some aluminum tube painted black over 4mm copper tubes

 

I liked the look so much that I also filled in the ugly gaps in the steering links as well. 

[87lc2 2663]

Nice job on the links, they look great.  Whole truck looks nice.  I just finished my Blackfoot CFX, great perfoming little truck.  I'll post a few photos in another thread.

[Aleblanc 57]

I've had my CMX with a Blackfoot body for about 3 years now, the wheelwells are now cut a bit but otherwise its a good working truck.

[a.w.k. 665]

Yeah, MST Chassis work great together with Tamiya bodies

CMX, CFX, CMX

[KEV THE REV 2318]

On 6/27/2019 at 6:42 PM, Maelstrom said:

Still needs a clear coat, but I like how the colour combo turned out . Next to come: details and weathering! 

Very nice work , it reminds me of the F150 Ford Ranger box art look

[OldSchoolRC1 983]

Love the color combo! Great looking truck! 

For those wondering, the CFX does work fine under the Blackfoot body. The motor is close, but you can get the body down appropriately.