Schumacher Procat - awash with period hop ups

Schumacher Procat. You might have spotted this car on ebay with its' outrageous starting bid price and thought 'no thanks' like I did when I first saw it. You might even have got around to giving it a second look and thought 'I'll see what's so special about it' - if you did you'd have spotted that it was almost criminally expensive for a Procat BUT it was fitted with some very rare and desirable (well to me anyway) hopups e.g. when you did you last see a car with an alloy front MMS diff holder and a full set of MMS chassis braces? I daresay the hardcore Schumacher 'anoraks' will be able to spot quite a few aftermarket parts on this.

In case you hadn't already guessed I won the auction! :)

It's in very good condition for an ex-racer but I have my doubts about how much racing it actually did - in this configuration anyway. It's remarkably clean for an ex-racer and doesn't have the usual signs of abuse and half ***ed repairs that just about every other ex-racer I've bought displays. Another thing that makes me doubt its' racing heritage is the fact that the Pete's Awesome Products ballraced steering arms foul badly on the front diff housing to the point where steering it would be almost impossible. The weight balance is a bit off as well, the alloy upgrades on the rear make it feel quite tail heavy compared to a standard car. Despite this I really like it. The drive belts are also a bit too tight for my liking but the drive train is very smooth. The original Schumacher Sanyo saddle pack SCE cells are dead flat (no surprises there) but are in really good condition and display well. Does anyone know who made the aftermarket rear wishbones?

I haven't made my mind up about the bodyshell, the paint scheme is acceptable in an 'old school' kind of way but I'm tempted to strip the decals off of it and try and smarten it up a bit. What do you think?

I haven't run the car yet but I will and if it performs well enough this could end up being my vintage 4WD runner at the Iconic RC retro race events scheduled in December this year and throughout next year (have a look on the forum thread). The Iconic organised races are always well planned and very friendly - I thoroughly recommend making the effort to make it along to one if you can.