King Bratfoot

Update 2019

Just going through some old photos and realised these were never updated. The KBF now wears this F150 body courtesy of Mokei Kagaku, which he posted to me back in 2017 in time for the Iconic Revival. I wanted an authentic-looking lexan body in my race colours for the just-for-fun monster truck race, and this was perfect. I can't remember what brand it is, and the plastic is very thin and flexible, but despite lots of cracks it's still in use today, almost 2 years later. This truck still gets a lot of use - it's one of my go-to trucks for bashing around the garden or taking to pretty much any meet anywhere.

I plan to do something clever with the steering, but not sure what or how... A future project, maybe?

Original post from 2016:

This was an impulse-purchase as a restored rolling chassis from IBIFTKH a few weeks back, a good excuse to get out on the road, meet a fellow TCer and talk Tamiya for a couple of hours before swapping some cash and coming home with a new toy.

Well-restored by its former owner, it came cleaned and regreased with all-new bearings, silvercan, servo, ready to throw in a speedo and radio and go play.

Of course my life is never that straightforward, but this one came together very quickly. A set of shocks (I think the originals from my TXT-01) went straight on, as did a set of HPI Super Star wheels. Rears had to be fitted with Junfac axle wideners as the axle stub isn't long enough for the wheels. A set of HPI bearing adapters were fitted up front.

I have an original and complete KBF shell in reasonable condition, but I've never been a fan of the original colour scheme so I grabbed my old Brat scaler shell which has been sitting unused for ages. This shell was originally fitted over a CC01, although it didn't get a lot of use and I always felt a bit dirty putting a Brat shell over a solid rear / independent front chassis. I'd long had plans of building a custom TA02T chassis for it, but I've got way too many scale projects on the go and something had to give. It was the perfect donor to relive my childhood days with a Mud Blaster. For now I'll keep my old Scrapspeed/San Miguel livery, although it might get an update later - maybe to original Mud Blaster colours, or maybe to my 2016 blue and silver team colours.

It's only had a brief test-run, fitted with a Super Stock BZ it actually feels a bit sluggish - I expected much more. My old Blackfoot Extreme felt, well, extreme with a BZ fitted. Maybe I've been spoilt by modern brushless hardware. Front shocks are a bit hard and rears a bit soft, I may have to dismantle them to figure out how they were assembled and adjust to suit. Or just swap front to rear and rear to front :D

I hope this will be a regular runner at meets this year - well, I say regular, thus far I've only got one bash in the calendar and that's 4 days away.

Happy truckin' :D