Back in the 80's I used to race locally. Kyosho was popular up here as was Tamaya.

We raced multiple classes, truck, 4wd, 2wd and monster. So here's what I ran.




Back then there was only one monster truck kit and it was from Tamaya. But being a Kyosho racer I took an old turbo optima chassis and pimped it out. Motor was courtesy of Makita from an industrial screw gun and provided plenty of torque. Initially used a Futaba ESC but these weren't very reliable so swapped in a Novak 4.



In truck class Tamaya pretty much had the market sowed up, the Blackfoot was the truck of choice but was pretty lacking in the reliability department.



Pretty much every piece of the stock Blackfoot chassis broke when you raced these trucks. They were ok for putting around the driveway but in competition they broke. So everything pretty much got replaced, the dog bones on stock Blackfoots were cheap plastic and rounded off if you ran any sort of power. So the only upgrade was metal, also the diff was also replaced with a metal part. Shocks, Kyosho because I had a large supply of those parts. Heavy hard plastic body replaced by a light lexan body. Cheap can motor upgraded to a BB Kyosho motor. Cheap speed controller swapped out for a Novak. And of course all the cheap plastic bearings were replaced with ball bearings. Basically four times the cost of the original kit, add in spare parts and well you are talking about $1000 plus.



This is the world's first 'Kyosho truck'. This absolutely dominated the Blackfoot in the truck class. Basically a turbo optima with truck tires and lexan body. All the standard racing goodies, Team Novak motor, 7 cell battery, Novak speed controller.
Kyosho platinum shocks. And with all the cars I raced fully redone with ball bearings.