Tamiya King Blackfoot Project

Page 1: Assembly

I purchased the King Blackfoot used, but it was still complete with a box in great condition. Inside the parts trees were scattered rather than bagged like they are new, and the tires were already stored on the wheels. As far as I could tell, all the parts were new with the notable exception of the body. Even though the model had never been built, the body had obviously been used. It was scratched and cracked, but it had never been painted and the stickers were still new on the sheet.

Here are the parts spread out on the table along with the original manual and hardware bags. There are not very many parts. On the right you can see the miscellaneous parts of the disassembled body after I installed the stickers and painted the grille. They don't look brand new but they are in pretty good shape. The chrome is a bit dull and cloudy.

These photos show the condition of the body as it arrived in the box. From afar it looks pretty good, but up close you can see some scratches on the hood and there were even a few cracks. I was able to repair the cracks and sand the scratches smooth. After application of a layer of black paint, the body looks new.

The parts trees reveal that the Blackfoot is an interesting amalgamation of prior sets. Obviously its DNA goes back to the original 58058 Blackfoot, but even before that the ORV chassis came from the 58037 Subaru Brat which is confirmed by the "A" space frame parts tree shown on the left. The original Blackfoot gearbox was not too good but was updated by the time of the 58110 Super Blackfoot. Even before that though, the upgraded gearbox first showed up on the 58101 Bush Devil. On the right you can see that the "D" parts tree for the gearbox is from the Bush Devil.

As you can see on the left, the "X" friction dampers are from the 58082 Madcap. They were blue on the Madcap and are red here, but are otherwise unchanged. Finally, on the right we see the "E" parts tree for the shock towers which is new for this model.

This model uses a very sturdy gear differential housed in a giant ring gear. The whole thing then sits inside the gearbox housing as shown. There's only a single stage of additional gear reduction given that the second gear in the photo also serves as the motor spur gear.

The completed gearbox now has the drive cups installed as well as the fixed length upper suspension arms which are pinned directly to the housing. This is the same gearbox introduced with the Super Blackfoot, but the upper arms are different. On the Super Blackfoot the rear dampers connected to the lower arms, but here they connect to the upper arms.

The photo on the left shows a completed rear lower suspension arm as well as an exploded view of another to visualize the assembly process. Each arm comes in two pieces which are screwed together with an upright pinned at the end. The upright houses a pair of bearings and a drive cup. On the right these lower arms have been installed along with the dog bone axle and the stock motor. This motor uses a very long 10 tooth pinion to reach inside far enough to mate with the spur gear.

The steering is very simple. There is a single bell crank mounted to a chassis cross member. The servo saver is not here, it will be mounted to the servo horn.

Here you can see the space from chassis along with the front bulkhead which differs substantially from the original Blackfoot and also from the Super Blackfoot. The lower arms are 2-piece and the upper arms are fixed length.

This kit was designed in the early days of Electronic Speed Controls and was intended to use Tamiya's C.P.R. unit but I don't have one. I did, however, have an older TEU-104BK ESC. This is a perfectly good ESC except that it does not have an integrated BEC (voltage regulator) so it passes battery voltage directly through to the receiver and servo. I installed a cheap 3A BEC to solve this problem.

The shocks included in the kit are the dreaded "friction dampers". I'll admit that these are better than some because at least they have a rubber collar inside which does provide a certain amount of resistance to motion. They are quite long as you can see.

Now I've installed the cover over the electronics, the bumper, and the wheels and tires. The tires appear to be new and unused. I've painted the body but have not yet installed the stickers or applied the clear coat.

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