Boom
Racing started as a company making RC accessories in Hong Kong in
2012. They made mostly wheels, bodies, and accessories which were
not widely available in North America. In 2019 they expanded their
scope considerably by offering their first complete chassis, the
BRX-01. While it looked like a very good chassis, I had already
had lots of trail trucks and rock crawlers, so the lack of availability
and overlap with the rest of my collection resulted in it not making my
list. In 2025 they released an adjustable wheelbase version of the
chassis in both 4-link and leaf sprung varieties. My interest way
piqued. Almost there. Then they came out with the Zil hard
body. That clinched it. I was heavily into playing
Snowrunner at the time, and this looked like just the sort of Russian
truck I drove on the screen that I could now drive in real life (in tiny
form).The BRX-01 AWB is a leaf sprung chassis with solid axles housing locked differentials, two piece aluminum frame rails, a two speed transmission with divorced transfer case, and pretty much all the good stuff you'd expect from a high end trail truck chassis. Pretty much everything is metal except for the rock sliders, and those are better in plastic anyway. The kit comes with a set of stamped beadlock wheels and scale (though not licensed) tires. It is a capable, adaptable chassis. The real star of the show is the body though. Boom Racing offers a significant line of classic, licensed hard bodies. Since the Zil-130 is a Russian truck, I highly doubt it is actually licensed, and in fact they never refer to it as a Zil-130 on the packaging. They just say "Zil Pickup".
So what is a Zil-130? Zil was a Russian truck company that operated for almost 100 years beginning in 1912. Trucks were not necessarily their sole focus, they actually made a lot of limousines, buses, and racing cars. Truck production started in the 1930's, with the Zil-130 starting in 1962 and continuing for 70 years. To be clear, the Zil-130 was never a pickup truck. This was a 6 ton truck with a dually rear axle and would typically have had a flatbed, dumping bed, or some kind of utility attachment. While marketed as 1/10 scale, this truck would have to be much larger to be in the correct relative scale with other 1/10 scale RC trucks. I can't find any evidence of a factory pickup truck version, though certainly some people have customized such a thing. The Boom Racing hard body is lovely. It has opening doors, hood, tail gate, and tool box. There is a full interior in the cab, but no scale engine bay under the hook. I found that most real trucks seem to have been painted in fairly bright colors, so I decorated mine in light blue but added a lot of weathering for realism. No one has ever seen a clean, new Russian truck.
 Page 1: Building the Chassis |
 Page 2: Building the Body |
 Page 3: Final Photos |