Radio Shack Black Wolf

[Nikko85 3439]

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...

[Nikko85 3439]

The electronics the car came didn't really work very well, so I decided to upgrade to the standard ESC and 2.4Ghz system.

The car takes a 7.2V battery, so at least that bit was easy!

The steering needed some modification to work. The servos on these cars are an odd size, so I had to cut out a little of the chassis to fit a modern servo. Luckily the section I needed to cut away was part of the 4 x AA battery bay which is no longer needed with the new ESC . I also cut a hole in the top of this bay to take the servo wire back into the chassis. You can see on the second photo how the servo just sits inside the cut out.

 

 

Last thing was to add the ESC and radio gear. I went for a Hobbywing 1060 for this one, which will give me lots of options for a more powerful motor

And then that's it. It's a super simple build, but it shows how easy some of these are to convert. Yes, a Grasshopper is only twice the price, but you get something very similar and that very few people have.  Also, look how cool it looks!!

And lastly, with the other car. This uses the gearbox of the Radioshack, but the chassis and electronics of a Nikko F10 - these cars are so similar you really can mix and match. 

 

 

 

 

[Nikko85 3439]

A quick action shot. Not bad for a toy grade car made in the 90s! 

 

 

[TimDoran 3]

I hope this doesn't offend anyone resurrecting this thread. 

I too have a black wolf 2. Unfortunately I left the batteries in the controller and it's all corroded. I thought I got lucky with a replacement controller from eBay, but it's the wrong frequency.

Please could you give a couple more details about the servo used? Also a recommendation for a very budget controller would be amazing. I will start a new thread with my rebuild.

[Nikko85 3439]

Do you know what freq the car is? I might be able to help keep it original.

Pictures would help, of the car, new controller, old controller etc.

Andrew

[TimDoran 3]

That would be amazing. I will take some photos in the daylight tomorrow.

[TimDoran 3]

Sorry it took a bit longer to reply, I had to work out how to post photos. The correct but bust controller is the type 2 27.145. Please let me know if you need more or different photos.

Correct but bust controller. Broken due to leaked batteries

 

The replacement controller which turned out to have the wrong frequency.

[Nikko85 3439]

. So the transmitter (tx) and receiver (rx) in the car both have a crystal and need to be the same frequency. In some cases you can open them up and swap out the crystals just by pulling them out of a socket. In your case the you either need to change the car to a 3 or change the transmitter to a 2. Now I can't remember if the radioshack pcb in the car has a crystal you can swap just by pulling out, it might do, or it might be  soldering job.

Likewise the Crystal in transmitter might be able to be swapped out easily (I.e just pulled out and replaced) or soldered in.

So if you can solder confidently you will just need to take the Crystal out of the broken tx and place in the working tx so they are both type 2. You can carefully open up the transmitter and have a look.

Google rc crystal, they are quite large and obvious, and easy to solder.

So I would open up the chassis and look at the pcb and also look at the tx and see if either crystal can be removed without soldering. If so, easy.

If not you may have to solder or I think most vintage RC AM transmitters would work, ask perhaps on the buying page as it's old tech so people often almost giving them away. I also have a spare type 2 Nikko you could try, it has no battery door but does work

[TimDoran 3]

Thanks so much for your advice, it was super helpful. I managed to unsolder both the crystals and resolder the old one into the new controller. I then re-assembled the controller, and fired it up. It partially worked, but the forward and reverse were swapped with the new controller. To overcome this I unscrewed the controller and turned the forward reverse around the other way. Then I needed to fine tune the Pot so that it cut out when in neutral. All worked and it was as fast and fun as I remembered as a child.

I managed to get a little play with the car, before the cables in the 30 year old battery died. Next thing to get is a new battery.

[Nikko85 3439]

That's brilliant, odd there was an opposite function on forward/reverse, but good job reversing and then looking at the pots to try and sort it.

A new battery (I'd recommend any 4500+ mAh 7.2 V pack) will do wonders too.

The Black Wolf was made on the Nikko F10 chassis, made under licence for Tandy/Radio Shack and is 99% the same. @Pintopower has a few great videos about the F10s and by extension that entire range.

Personally I think I prefer the Black Wolf to the F10, not so much for looks, but it's so much cheaper! Tires are slightly cooler too. 

All in all it's not a bad car for what it is, a certainly will give a grasshopper/hornet a run for it's money! And I think it looks cool. Do show some pictures when it's running.

 

[Exit13 673]

Just was given a black wolf II

I wonder if I should mess with it ?

[Exit13 673]

Anyone know where I can find a Battery for this model?

[Exit13 673]

On 6/25/2022 at 12:57 PM, Exit13 said:

Just was given a black wolf II

I wonder if I should mess with it ?

 

[Exit13 673]

On 6/25/2022 at 12:57 PM, Exit13 said:

Just was given a black wolf II

I wonder if I should mess with it ?

anyone know where I can find a battery for this?

[TimDoran 3]

I have finally got around to buying a battery for the Black Wolf. My son has been having lots of fun driving the car around. We have made a video of it charging around, with both a 1st person drivers view and a 3rd person view. Its our first video so be kind.

The battery is considerably larger than the old ones and the car runs for a nice long time.

Watch it here:

https://youtu.be/__Uy2GNzPHI

 

[Exit13 673]

1 hour ago, TimDoran said:

I have finally got around to buying a battery for the Black Wolf. My son has been having lots of fun driving the car around. We have made a video of it charging around, with both a 1st person drivers view and a 3rd person view. Its our first video so be kind.

The battery is considerably larger than the old ones and the car runs for a nice long time.

Watch it here:

https://youtu.be/__Uy2GNzPHI

 

Can you send me a link for the battery?

[TimDoran 3]

18 hours ago, Exit13 said:

Can you send me a link for the battery?

BAKTH High Capacity Security 7.2V... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07R3BML88?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

[Exit13 673]

5 minutes ago, TimDoran said:

BAKTH High Capacity Security 7.2V... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07R3BML88?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Just a regular Tamiya style battery?  Like goes in my grasshopper?  Seems to thick too fit this radio shack car, no?

[TimDoran 3]

I think my car might be a bit different to yours then. Is yours a bit older than mine maybe?

[Exit13 673]

I’ll take some pics but the battery Connector is def Tamiya’s but the thickness - not sO much 

[Loyski69 0]

can I pick this up and ask yet another question relating to radio shack black wolf/phantom models please\\\\\\\\\\\\/

[Exit13 673]

Sure. 

[Loyski69 0]

can I pick this up and ask yet another question relating to radio shack black wolf/phantom models please\\\\\\\\\\\\/

[Nikko85 3439]

I think I've replied, good luck with the fix, and post some pictures.