john01374

Well I'll tell you this. All these trucks were designed to be more for fun than racing and they are all extremely good at doing so. The original Black Foot used the same chassis as the Tamiya Frog, Monster Beetle, Mud Blaster and a whole bunch of other cars an trucks. The good news is that chassis is still in production and parts are available. At one point in time there were a ton of hop up items for this chassis. Today those parts are hard to find and expensive when you do.

The lunch box is a great truck to go out and have fun with and over the years i've found a few ways to make mine handle a whole lot better. I had to do some hacking and slicing but the first thing I did was fit T-Maxx Oil filled shocks all around. This got rid of 90% of the hopping and bouncing the truck did. The rears are a direct bolt on but the fronts required some creativity to get them to work. The reason being is the T-Maxx shocks are shorter than the stock setup and lowering the LB too much causes massive amounts of positive camber (top of wheels pointed at each other). While some camber is good, too much is a bad thing. From there I did the 3rd shock mod (good lunch box 3rd shock mod and you'll see it). I used an old touring car shock I had laying around and it worked great. Swapping shocks also lowered the truck about 1/2 inch which is just about right. The next thing I did was swap the stock hard plastic body for a Lexan version. It's made by Parma and costs $20. This mod made the biggest improvement in how the truck ran. No more flipping over, Wheelies were harder to do etc. Now with all that being said and done the truck did handle a whole lot better and I spent a lot less time running to turn it back over. Problem is these mods took away a lot of the reason a lunch box is so much fun.

As for the King Blackfoot. I believe that was based on the Frog chassis as well. There are a few things you can do to any RC to make it better. First is replacing any plastic or brass bushing with honest ball bearings. No sense in buying the expensive ones. A $10 set off ebay work just as well. Next is oil filled shocks. This gets ride of the bouncing around. You can also look for ways to lighten the truck up. Tamiya's are built tough but that sometimes means a whole lot of stuff that doesn't need to be there. Ditching those hard plastic bodies are also a great way to lower the center of gravity. It also goes without saying that stronger motors and better electronics are great upgrades as well. If by chance these trucks are still running the old mechanical speed controller swap it for an ESC immediately.

Do the trucks one at a time and you'll have better results. If I can help you feel free to ask me any questions you like. I've been a tamiya fan since I got started in this hobby 25+ yrs ago.