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Re: Schumacher Cougar2 TEAM
Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 11:29 pm
by Bormac
Hello Jay Dub. Im glad to see you made it here and it will b awesome hearing and seeing more of what you know and have been part of. I must be one of the few really huge Schumacher buggy fans in the world. I love all the early cars but also like the later stuff too. I'd like to se some pictures when you get the chance. Cheers-Jason.
Re: Schumacher Cougar2 TEAM
Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 11:39 am
by AD-RS1600i
Jay Dub wrote:Hello all, I am brand new to this forum and I must say I love it!. I saw this post and just had to reply. First, a little background about my self. My name is Jeff Wittman, and I recently retired from a nearly 20 year racing carreer with Schumacher and (several others) manufacturers. I absolutelly love looking at all the retro stuff here. I wish that we could get a retro class (classes) started here in the US ( West coast, San Jose bay area) as I do accasionally club race. I did allot of R&D for Cats West (west coast distributor for Schumacher) and Schumacher USA during the early days of Shumachers off road program.
"Actually Ad, you are referring to the Works buggy, and your memory serves you very correctly The Works had the different rear end, purple Alloy and carbon goodies over the stock Cougar 2 Team.
I think you are right that this was the last car based on a Cecil Schumacher design. I think Phil Booth also had a lot to do with the Works car, as well as all the works drivers of the day."
I am responsable for a large part of this. The moving back of the transmission to straighten the drive line, the swept front arms on all of the sucsessive series of the cougars. I even developed and sold a bell crank steering system for the cougars to improve akerman for use on high bite blue grooved tracks here in the US (It never saw production though as the 2000 series of cars was soon to come). Caster block, as well as steering arm changes were modifications that I developed over the several itterations of the cougar series. I also manufactured a gear drive conversion for the cougar tranny. Phil was still convinced at that time that the belts were better though.
I thoroughly enjoyed all my time with Schumacher, and still consider them my favorite team
Someday, I will post pics of all my cars (restored hopefully) and parts, and prototype stuff I developed and tested. I hope you will find it as interesting as I do.-Jeff
Wow how spooky!!! Many thanks for filling us in! - I always felt the belt transmission was killing the performance of what otherwise was a very elegant, well balance design. To me the belt transmission had too much rolling resistance dulling acceleration and rolling corner speed. I've always seen myself as a bit of a garden shed developer, so back around 2000 I tested my theory by grafting a Cougar 2000 gearbox, drive shafts and hubs onto the back of a Cougar 2. I only raced indoors but it felt really good, and a lot more lively.
The works Cougar 2 (purple chasis) is a thing of beauty - so much extra development and new parts went into it when you examine it closely
Make sure you do post your cars, I'd love to see them
Cheers
Adrian
Re: Schumacher Cougar2 TEAM
Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 12:02 pm
by AD-RS1600i
