Modified King Blackfoot getting abused!

I was given the King Blackfoot about a year ago as a non runner, the reciever had got very wet and given up the ghost.

Us usual, I completely stripped the truck and rebuilt it using ball bearings, another thing I always do is shave all the plastic parts where they come off the sprues as no-one ever seems to do this and it's one of my pet hates.

I took the stock 'stiction' shocks and put them in the parts box and dug out the old Losi XX buggy I was also given, the Losi's redeeming feature was that it had aluminium shocks on it all round, long ones at the back and slightly shorter ones at the front.

After a little mixing and matching, the Losi shocks are on with ball ends etc. I also pillaged the parts box for some adjustable turnbuckles. I then removed the standard fixed length upper wishbones and installed the adjusters, I moved the lower shock mounts from the (Now gone) upper wishbones to the top of the rear hub using one bolt/washer/nyloc to mount the adjustable turnbuckle to the top of the rear hub to the shock. Hard to explain, see picture 1.

I new the differential on the blackfoot was ok, but also new I had nothing 'in the box' to convert it to limited slip. So I did the next best thing and converted it 'no-slip'.

I completely stripped the diff, cleaned it in fairy and hot water to remove all traces of grease and then assembled it with just the slightest dabbing of grease, I then took it apart again and mixed up a small blob of David's P38 body filler using a very small amount of hardener. I put the lower of the 2 outdrive gears in the diff housing then put some of the filler in, I then put the spider and 3 planetary gears in, followed by more filler and finally installed the other outdrive and washer and screwed on the outer cover. I then turned my attention to the rest of the truck setting up suspesion etc.

Once the truck was completely back together I installed some radio, a servo and one of my Futaba MC330 CR speedo's.
The motor I used was a 17x2 Team orbital Mach Mod which seems very punchy in this truck.

I used my basher shell for this truck which is a lexan copy of the Subaru Brat while I finish off the original show shell. This is the normal King Blackfoot shell, but painted using Alclad Prismatic Scarabeus and a top coat of lacquer. The effect is lovely with the paint changing from green to blue in differing lights. I'll post some pics of this when the body is complete.


I took it out to the carpark and tested it out, the difference that locking the diff made was huge, lots of traction! Turning the thing at speed however is a different matter, you need to let off the throttle totally to get round a corner.