Risky running a Vintage car?

[Speedy-]

Another question for you all. I was thinking of taking my Cougar 2 back down to Eden Park Raceway to see how it runs, but am quite worried I'll break something and not be able to replace it.

Has anyone started making repro bits for these yet?

From memory bits that used to break were, wishbones and that kick plate at the front, to occasional rear hub but all else seemed to hold up to the punishment.

Maybe I should scour ebay to see what I can pick-up spare before running it.

I quite like the look of the Cougar SV but it's a lot of money to sell up everything to go all new again if I decide I don't want to take it down there too often.

Other alternative is to run all my old electrics in an SV but that would be a bit silly in a nice new car.

[Robbiejuk]

My mate ran his cougar 1 when he came back to racing, and against my advice went out an brought a brushless motor and lipo batteries to go in it. Suffice to say the Belt transmission didn't take very kindly to the new power and it melted his diff together. So if you are going to put new gear in it makesure it's not particularily hot. Might be ok with a 10.5 though.

[Adam F]

Dont expect to get anything repro, maybe a body & wing but not much else.

I will be running a procat in some vintage races later in the year, but bought two cars as spares are hard to come by and can be v expensive...

Have seen complete brushless B4FT's for as little as £200-250 with full RC Gear, a couple of lipo's & a charger.. even if you dont get back into it you certainly wont loose money when you come to sell up..

[jeroen206]

Almost all the parts off the cougar 2 are easy to get.
Many parts from the XTR are interchangeble , wishbones , front+rear hubs , kickup plate .
All shocktowers are available at Fibrelyte.

Only parts hard to get are the diff pulleys.
When you got pro diffs in your cougar (ceramic balls)than brushless is no issue.
I run a LRP sphere with a novak 5.5t in my cougar , no problems at all.


A gearbox of a Club10 cougar is even better , gears still available , same as from a Rascal.

So when you want to run your cougar , run it.


http://www.oople.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25123
A cougar with club 10 gearbox and Orion 100a esc and LRP 3-star motor (6.5t)

[Speedy-]

Ok, that makes me feel a bit more comfortable running it again. I'd probably leave the 12 double I have in there at the moment as it still seems to run fine. Even my 1700 Sanyo SCRC packs all charge and run fine after sitting all those years!?!?

When you say the XTR bits are interchangable are they they same geometry/measurements or different?

[yorak]

Many parts from the XTR are interchangeble , wishbones , front+rear hubs , kickup plate. All shocktowers are available at Fibrelyte.

I'd like to hear more of this, but first some background: After a gush of nostalgy it now seems I have an cat pack back at my place. I raced Cougar in the mid 90ies but sold it later. I recently got little carried away and bought few nearly complete Cougars (~2.5 cars in total):

I have one Top Cat that was never run (new bulit)! Too bad the original owner "borrowed" some parts fronm the rear end to his Cougars, so some parts are missing. I'm planning to more or less restore this one by searching the missing bits and pieces as soon as I get a list done of what is missing. I have painted but unused body and wing for this fine specimen.

Then there is one Cougar 2 with Club 10 gearbox. Carbon fibre front shock mount, but glass fiber back shock mount. It also has an alloy colored chassis with weird hole placement. This car was in pretty bad shape when it arrived but now it is in great running condition save the left front wishbone T1209 (currently I'm using Traxxas Bandit arms, but they are tad too wide, so my plan is to repro some front wishbones myself by moulding them from epoxy resin). I will put 12 T brushless motor and lipos as soon as parts to fit Traxxas slipper arrive. I have tools available to make an custom body for this using vacuum forming. The mould needs some work before first body prototype tough.

Finally there is one half of an Cougar mk1. Lots of pieces missing and almost all of those still there are broken in some way. This will probably become an mid motored Frankenstain monster of an car with all mix-and-match pieces I can get my furry little hands on (I'm thinking Traxxas Bandit front arms, custom steering levers, top deck etc.). So the goal is to build sort of an basher from this that I can drive, crash and try some crazy modifications with without worrying too much.

Perhaps I will post some pictures of these later to Tamiya Club when the projects are a little bit more complete.


I would be really interested in knowing which cars are "Cougar compatible". The parts I'm especially interested in are:

U322 Lower suspension plate
T1209 Left side front wishbone
U195 Belt

U215 Gear cover (for TopCat)
U254 Nicad holder and strap (for TopCat)
U255L motor guard (for TopCat)T260 body and wing mount (for TopCat)
T237 rear bulkhead (for TopCat)
U555 Shock Absorbers (rear ones are missing)

Phew. Quite a long list I know. However the missing parts are no showstoppers. In runner and basher cougars I can use my imagination replacing the missing parts and with TopCat I'm not in hurry to hunt those parts down.

BUT... It would be great knowing which ones of these parts are still available as spares of newer car models. It is quite difficult to find pictures of the spare parts offered by Schymacher. For example spare part bag U2330 "Wishbone; Yoke and Strg Block; Big 6 (pr)" sounds something I could use because from what I could gather these could be Cougar compatible BUT without pictures there is no way of knowing.

ps. One of the diffs I have has alloy extrtuders (right word? the things the diff plates are connected to). Is this some kind of "pro" diff or what? Do you have any information on this jeroen?

[Welshy40]

Well i still use my 94 / 95 proto kyosho belt drive and i havent needed to replace any diffs, layshaft gears or belts since i started running it two years ago when i started up again. I run a 5.5 without any problems, however i would seriously advise against running any fast winds as if you do break it getting replacements will be hard. If your thinking of getting parts molded then the cost wont make it worthwhile so better just run a slow wind in a vintage race.

[rocketrob]

Originally Posted by Robbiejuk

My mate ran his cougar 1 when he came back to racing, and against my advice went out an brought a brushless motor and lipo batteries to go in it. Suffice to say the Belt transmission didn't take very kindly to the new power and it melted his diff together. So if you are going to put new gear in it makesure it's not particularily hot. Might be ok with a 10.5 though.

sorry, but your theory is a bit of a misnomer and misinformative. the BL systems of today do not have any more power than the low wind motors we've run in the past. now if someone had some cheap toy-grade RTR, instead of a cougar, it might be one thing. but there is no rational reason any hobby-quality racer should handle some of the more modern mills.


the only problem with running/racing any vintage rig is the availability or spare parts; so if you have them on hand have at it, but if you're relying on picking them up at the lhs you might rethink it unless you're talking about one of the more popular cars (RC10, JRX2, etc) in which there's tons of spares on eBay every day. vintage racing is picking up in popularity all over

[Smartalec]

Originally Posted by Welshy40

Well i still use my 94 / 95 proto kyosho belt drive and i havent needed to replace any diffs, layshaft gears or belts since i started running it two years ago when i started up again. I run a 5.5 without any problems, however i would seriously advise against running any fast winds as if you do break it getting replacements will be hard. If your thinking of getting parts molded then the cost wont make it worthwhile so better just run a slow wind in a vintage race.

Are you running at Taplow on Friday?

[Welshy40]

Yes if its on im there

[P_B]

Originally Posted by rocketrob

sorry, but your theory is a bit of a misnomer and misinformative. the BL systems of today do not have any more power than the low wind motors we've run in the past.

Maybe not if you ran BL on old cells, but add a modern lipo into the equation and I reckon there's a good deal more oomph than the mid 90's.

[rocketrob]

Originally Posted by P_B

Maybe not if you ran BL on old cells, but add a modern lipo into the equation and I reckon there's a good deal more oomph than the mid 90's.

huh?
maybe midway to the end of a run, but nothing was hotter than taking a old-style pack freshly off the charger or bump-box

spinning the wheels off them then is really no different than spinning the wheels off them now

[chatts#725]

Originally Posted by rocketrob

huh?
maybe midway to the end of a run, but nothing was hotter than taking a old-style pack freshly off the charger or bump-box

spinning the wheels off them then is really no different than spinning the wheels off them now

I raced my cougar sv at weekend against a mate with a b3, he has a 12t double from memory and mine 300 quids worth of lrp and novak 6.5 and it matched me down the straight everytime, there was nothing in it

[Welshy40]

I think the brushed motors have more top end but the brushless has fractionally more accelaration however a brushed motor specialist spend hours balancing and re winding to lower the tolerances and other than more top end the brushed pretty much matched brushless. Dont forget that the brushed could be overgeared wheras a brushless cant, but brushless drinks less and needs vertually no work. Anyway my vintage handles a 5.5 with ease so see no reason why not only if you have sufficient spares.

[P_B]

Originally Posted by rocketrob

huh?
maybe midway to the end of a run, but nothing was hotter than taking a old-style pack freshly off the charger or bump-box

spinning the wheels off them then is really no different than spinning the wheels off them now

Definitely mid to end of a run, but I also think at the start too. I used to run 11 and 12 turns with 1700 SCRC's in the mid-90's - no great shakes. The same motors when I came back in the mid 00's with IB4200's were noticably quicker. With lipo they were better again.

Brushed/brushless motors have always had approximate power parity, but cells have come on quite a bit in the last 15 years.

Originally Posted by chatts#725

I raced my cougar sv at weekend against a mate with a b3, he has a 12t double from memory and mine 300 quids worth of lrp and novak 6.5 and it matched me down the straight everytime, there was nothing in it

To illustrate my point, I'll bet he wasn't running B3 era cells...

Getting back on topic, Cougars had quite a fine pitched belt in their gearbox so I'd imagine a brittle vintage one might baulk at modern power. With a new properly tensioned belt and well-built diff, you might just stand a chance.

[rocketrob]

Originally Posted by chatts#725

I raced my cougar sv at weekend against a mate with a b3, he has a 12t double from memory and mine 300 quids worth of lrp and novak 6.5 and it matched me down the straight everytime

and there ya go, mate

[Si Coe]

Also James don't forget Bury's straight isn't exactly long or fast thanks to the hump in the middle. I wasn't slow on the straight in the 4wd A final using a 12 year old Cat'98 with an Ezrun 9T! At Chadderton or Southport you'd have blown him away on the straight.

[BORMAC]

Ive been racing my early Schueys in competition for years. The list includes Topcat, Cougar1, Cougar2 and Cougar2 works,CatXLS, Procat and Bosscat works.
The only real problem you WILL have is with the diff. Its not that the diffs aren't up to the task but you realy need to make certain you are running the little 'dome' type spring washers on your adjustment screw just infront of the thrust bearing. The Cougar2 manual has no reference to these and I learnt the hard way. The diffs loosen off slightly, they heat up then the plastic outdrives melt with the heat and the diff hets so loose the car wont move. It took me ages to work it out but once I did I have never looked back.
Also you need to keep that thrust bearing clean as ever last bit of dirt will turn those little balls into a grinding paste and your diff will feel terrible. I started using a foam ball stud gasket and it works well.

[BORMAC]

Ive had a ball running my schueys.

[yorak]

Originally Posted by BORMAC

The only real problem you WILL have is with the diff. I

Oh. Thanks for the tip Bormac. Looks like I should rebuild my diff before going to that brushless lipo combo. I have a ball bearing (grooved washer with tiny tiny balls between) and I think 6 convex 'dome' washers in my diff but I think I built them into wrong configuration. That is my springs are like

\\\\
|||| WRONG!
////

instead of

/\/\
|||| RIGHT!
\/\/

As I had no clue why the dome washers were there. The "spring" word you used clears it all out.

Great that this came up because the alloy outdrives I just got help them from melting but the same does not go for the diff housing/gear..