- Schumacher Cougar SV -
Words & Pictures: Arn0

Steering

With the first part of the build-up, it is time to discover a bit more about the car's parts and especially the carbon fiber ones which include the chassis, both front and rear shock towers and upper links mounts, a bracket as well as the top desk-battery holder. This last component and its teammate the low desk, are both made from 2.5mm carbon fiber while as the upper link mounts are a bit bigger machined in a 3mm thick plate.

These upper mounts are the 39mm wide ones for the front end and 40.5mm located on the rear of the car. Some optional parts are available with 34mm, 44mm and 49mm for the front ones and 45.5mm and 50.5mm for the rear. There is potential to get some more value in between each but if you count the number of possibilities to set up the car, well, that might be enough.

The shock towers and the bracket are the thickest carbon fiber parts at 4mm. The chassis and the towers have machined areas to obtain some specific clearances to install the gearbox and set the towers on their dedicated supports.

On the other side, there is also some plastic parts as a well designed and molded front bottom plate. This bottom plate has a step that, once linked with the low desk, makes a completely flat assembly with the low desk. Some steering components get a bit of flash but nothing major and a quick cut with an x-acto will allow the removal of this excess of material.

As this is a competition car, the steering is equipped with four rubber sealed ball bearings to guide around two small metallic posts, the little arms supporting a rack. The ball bearings are not tight mounted as there will be some load applied and no high revolution. The metallic posts are secured with two long screws and two thin washers, make sure of a sufficient clearance with the bulkhead. There is no mention of thread lock here, a little drop won't hurt to avoid any loss of parts within in the assembly while the car goes around the track.

The rack itself is set with another four sealed ball bearings, the exact same as the arms, and again two posts support this item. The Ackerman effect can be adjusted by moving forward or backward the ball studs on the rack. Once all together, the steering system sits very low on the car, that's pretty impressive. And it is smooth, super smooth! Well done!

To get the steering fully done, you may install a servo and some additional linkages. You must set the servo to neutral when setting the horn as it won't be possible once the front end is completed. The manual is well detailed for this section and various horns are provided depending on which servo you use. Strangely, there is no servo-saver in the kit. As a measure of precaution, you'd better purchase one.

Front suspension

Once the steering is done, the following and logical step is the front suspension. Some nice features are part of this car's extremity but as is standard, this front end is a double wishbone type, as the SV is a racing car.

The front link mount sits on top of the steering posts, evidence here that every part was fully considered in the design to move components as forward as possible. The front bulkhead finishes the car nose with two pairs of screws. All parts need a little clean up once they have been removed from their molding support. The link mount receives two ball studs adjustable with some shims, one on each side is included in the kit so be sure to get some more to raise the ball studs. This setting will affect both the roll center and the camber change.

The following step is related to the front end's mobile components such as wishbones, hub carriers and turnbuckles. Interestingly, the front wishbones can be mounted on either side as a tuning option. As others cars on the market, switching A-arms has an effect on the geometry of the vehicle by increasing the wheelbase of 1.5mm and hence changes the weight distribution slightly but also affects the Ackerman effect, giving an easier car to drive.

The threaded hinge pins to mount hub carriers with A-arms	The front axles allows you to use different brands of rims
Front wishbones as per kit	Front wishbones flipped

As a standard advice, make sure suspension moves freely under gravity; mounted per the manual, one of the wishbones was slightly tight, but when flipping the A-arms, everything what perfect. So use a file or fine sandpaper if needed to remove some material from both wishbones and from the bottom plate to obtain a free suspension. A small bumper will secure the hinge pins in position and will also protect part of the bottom from impact.

The outer hinge pins connecting A-arms with yokes are threaded near the head screw - this item is already used on the Cat SX but it is always nice to get them instead of those e-clips that tend to get loose at one moment or another.

Here the assembly is fully secured and easy to remove in case of necessity. The exact same procedure applies for the hub carriers and the yoke as one was a bit tight but that was really minor.

The hub carriers are fairly common which is good and are featured with two possible height adjustments (high and low), allowing to change the roll center and the bumper steer, so remember every time to properly set the shim under the ball stud. For racers who have spare rims other than Schumacher’s, those will fit on the axle as long as you can use the screw and not a nut.

The last two items to have a completed front suspension are the turnbuckles and the shock tower. The latter have been already mentioned and will be maintained using two 12mm long screws. There are three top damper positions, a regular feature stronger than a screw. Regarding the turnbuckles, they are made from steel and are gold plated. As many racers switch them for titanium components, that’s not really a matter, they will do the job for the first runs

Once together, this front end is real specific, open spaced, with a servo located more forward than standard.

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