Finishing the unfinished

I'd been on the lookout for a King Blackfoot for a while. There's lots of them around - mostly runners in poor condition with the odd NIB for about quadruple the price. I considered building one from new parts, but some of the bits are hard to find.


This popped up on eBay a few weeks back. A part built example which had never been run. The body was still unpainted and the roll bar spots were still on the tree. All for £119 delivered. Bargain! When it arrived I did a parts inventory and discovered a few bits missing, just screws and metal bits - no problem as I was able to obtain screw bags C and D for about £13 from Seidel.


There are plenty of these about but I think it's quite rare to see one in full box art - the manual specifies the roll bar and spot lights should be painted - a lot of people leave these in the grey plastic. I did the roll bar in TS-30 Silver Leaf and the spots in TS-29 Semi gloss black and TS-26 Pure white as instructed and the body was primed with Tamiya fine grey primer, wet sanded, TS-14 black, wet sand again then three coats of TS-13 clear, sanding between. I gave the windows a bit of a polish too. I did deviate slightly by doing the bed in TS-6 matt black just to break up the gloss a little.


There are some large stickers and a lot of swage lines, curves and recesses in the body so that was a little tricky. There's a couple of creases but most of them went on OK. I've got the option chrome plated roll bar and wheels to fit at some point when I fancy a change.


The truck came with no electrics other than the motor, the MSC was missing so I put in a TEU-105BK and a grey Hobbyking steering servo. Just for the pics I added a TL-01 LED set, but I'll use this for something with more lights as it's a bit of a waste just for the two headlights. Pretty happy with how it turned out!