Back to the Track - Schumacher Mi-8 Carpet Racer

[Mad Ax 11171]

What's this?  Another Back to the Track thread?  Yes - I periodically start these whenever I get the urge to go racing again.

2024 was perhaps my best year of racing ever, completing all rounds of the Iconic Cup for the first time.  It was hard work - 6 weekends away from home plus the bonus non-championship round at Cotswold.  But there was a moment when I was sitting on the tarmac, watching the end-of-season trophy presentation, the sun on my back, the tyre dust on my face, additive on my fingers and the smell of the previous night's barbecue smoke in my clothes, when I reflected back over the miles driven, the time on track, the battles, the passes, the crashes, the breakages, and I was temporarily overwhelmed with emotion.  What an adventure.  What a journey.

I was certain, as I set off on the 4+ hour journey home from Halifax with the entire season behind me, that I would be back again in 2025.

2025, however, brought fresh challenges.  Not least, the Iconic Cup's schedule was punishing - it would have been hard to cover my fuel costs for the first 3 rounds.  Losing Mendip Raceway meant there was no home race for me.  Sealing the deal was the fact that the entire series got fully booked out within a few hours of opening, while I was busy racing at the Modelsport 50th at the beginning of February.

But - all is not lost for 2025's racing plan.  A new race series - the BRCA Sporstcar Endurance Championship - pits teams of 4 drivers against each other, driving modern touring chassis with Le Mans Hypercar bodies and 21.5T brushless motors, in races ranging from 2 to 6 hours in length.  This is something I've wanted to do for years.  Sadly I missed out on Mendip's endurance race last September by dint of Facebook's wonderful algorithm deciding I didn't need to know about it until it was too late to get a team together.

The only endurance I've ever driven was a 2-hour buggy race on A1 Racing Club's astroturf track.  It was dark by the time we started, it rained throughout the race, and our re-release Sand Scorcher suffered a number of problems - not least the universals coming lose every 5 laps - but we finished top of our class by being the only SRB entry to finish.  The ciders we sipped after the race had ended were some of the best we've ever tasted.

Almost a decade later, a racer who I know from a local club but haven't seen in years, posted on Facebook saying he was entering his TRF-421 in the Sportscar Endurance series and was looking for drivers.  I jumped in straight away, offering my services and - I hope - accurately and honestly describing my abilities as someone who is definitely not quick, nor skilled at car setup, but careful, dependable, and doesn't crash much.  At least - that's how I was in M-chassis in 2024.  My relatively high place in the Iconic Cup championship didn't come because I was topping the timesheets (far from it) but because I was consistent, stayed on track, picked up points in every race and was always there on track while others were spinning off it or haemorrhaging parts.

However, this was only in the M-chassis class.  I haven't driven a 4wd touring car in anger since the TA-05 IFS was a current car.  I had a brief stint racing a stock TT-01E with a Fat Fox body at my local club, but that was a few years ago now.  2019, by all accounts, and I wasn't very good at it.

So - I figured my best chance of not embarrassing myself and my team mates at the first race of the season was to get myself something modern and head along to the local club to get my eye in.  If I can handle a modern touring car around a tight and technical club track with a 17.5T brushless in it, a 21.5T car on a nice big outdoor circuit should be easy by comparison.

Modern TCs are seriously expensive - way out of my budget - but with the new Schumacher Mi-9 on the market and Christmas just over, there were a few Mi-8s for sale in the Book of Face.

A week later, this landed on my doorstep.

[Mad Ax 11171]

So, what is it?

It's a Schumacher Mi-8 touring car, previously used on tarmac at a club that has now closed down.  The previous owner said he was an A-final regular and the car had been great on tarmac, but as the club had closed he was moving over to buggies and the Mi-8 was no longer needed.  I agreed to give it a good home in exchange for some Paypal tokens, and then set about the long process of stripping it down and rebuilding it from the ground up.

I started a month ago - on 10th Feb, to be precise - by rolling out my new HPI pit mat.  I won this in the raffle at the Modelsport 50th, and it should be perfect on my workbench.  Much easier to keep clean than the fabric Asiatees one I've been using.  Not only do I get shock oil, axle grease and various other nasty things on the matt, I also do a lot of work with aluminium and it's not uncommon for swarf to get picked up in a fabric mat, which puts scratches in bodies and carbon parts.

And this is what the chassis looks like.  Touring cars have moved on a long way in the last few years!  The last modern TC I bought was an Xray T4F 2019, which wasn't really all that different in design philosophy to the Corally RDX that I owned back in the last 00s.

This is completely different.  Just look at it - those carbon A arms are works of art!  I could disassemble this car, glue all the parts to a white board, and hang it on my wall.

As far as I'm aware, it's mostly stock.  It has carbon battery hooks and alloy battery clamps, and the rear uprights are alloy, but everything else is as it came out the box.  Although the box says it's an alloy chassis version - which would be more suited to carpet - this one has the carbon chassis.  This makes sense, as it was raced outdoors.  I don't know if the box is wrong, or if the previous owner changed it for a carbon version.

It also looks like the previous owner fitted the simpler top arms.  The kit comes with 2 options - one has 2 turnbuckles, for adjusting camber and caster, the other has a single turnbuckle (seen here) for simpler adjustment of camber only.  I wasn't sure why - I would piece together the puzzle later.  The other arms had been assembled, so I guessed he'd preferred the simpler setup.  At best, I was only partly right.

 

[Mad Ax 11171]

Notice anything wrong here?  This carbon part mounts the upper arms to the bulkheads.  At some point the car has had a hard knock, and it's split the carbon.  This would have put the alignment out, maybe too much to compensate with the multi-piece arms.

I found more problems on the front lower shock mounts.  This one was partly out, and both had damaged threads.  I guess they take a bit of a bashing.

The shock eyes aren't great either.

I think most of that thread came out on the screw  

 

[Mad Ax 11171]

Also most of the rod ends have open backs, so the balls can be unscrewed instead of unpopped, which lengthens the life of the rod end considerably, but for some reason this one didn't.  There were plenty of spares in the box so I'd swap this over later.

Here's how they should look.

So - an hour into the strip down, and I'd found a few parts that needed replacing.  Some I already had - an opened back of new shock ends were included - but I needed new shock mounts and a new carbon upper arm inner mount.

Schumacher are pretty good for parts - sometimes things can go out of stock for a while, but their numbering system is good and plenty of UK stockists carry parts.  It wasn't hard to get new parts.

To be continued...

[River19 225]

Nice !!!! I'm a Schumacher fan.....I race a L1R for 4wd 13.5 off road.......

A friend campaigns a Neon when he can find a place running a class that fits.

They make a nice, but finicky kit.  Carbon is cool right until it breaks lol

[Starky_UK 167]

Just been down a similar journey rebuilding a well-used Mi8 to race this year. First 'practice' outing was fun and looking forward to its first race this Friday. 

I love the sound of the new BRCA Sports car endurance championship but unfortunately family commitments mean I have to stick to local races whenever I can. I've not seen a race schedule for it yet, but if there is a round local to me I may try to get involved even if only to spectate. 

[Mad Ax 11171]

The next lunchbreak I was back in the workshop for more rebuilding.  This is the mullered inner suspension mount.

And here is everything all stripped down to its component parts.

The bottom of the chassis is scratched from racing outside, but that doesn't affect performance.  The rash is quite nasty under the front but who cares?  It's a race car.

(Although I confess I did look for a chassis decal to hide it)

[Mad Ax 11171]

The front spool is a bit melty too - something must have happened to this at some point, but it still works OK so doesn't need replacing.

The next day some fresh parts arrived.  Upper link mounts, lower shock mounts (called alloy lock stops as I think they are used for a different purpose on other cars) and some new lower shock eyes, although I found a half-empty pack of these in the kit box later.

Presumably I did more than just photograph parts that day, but I have no photographic evidence and it was too long ago for me to remember.

[Mad Ax 11171]

Next day, all I photographed was the rear hubs.  They are aftermarket alloy ones, but the threads aren't in great shape.  They are quite neat - they have grub screws in to hold the pivot balls in place, but I guess too much torque on the grub will damage the thread on the ball, which will then damage the alloy thread in the hub on the way out.  They're serviceable, but may need replacing.  Front hubs are plastic and they're not perfect either, so might be worth budgeting for all new alloy hubs later this year.

There's not a lot of photos over the next week, but reassembly was halted when I couldn't find enough shims to return the car to stock spec.  My plan was to rebuild it as per the book, but with a load of shims missing I had to wait for more parts to arrive.  Fortunately Schumacher seem pretty good for stock and parts aren't overly expensive, although it adds up when I'm buying lots of little packets.

These wide shims are used to mount the lower arms to the chassis.  Changing them adjusts the roll centre.

BTW I'm really enjoying my new Pit Matthew.  The rubber pockets stop screws etc. from getting lost.  I usually use some Ikea tubs, but I have a tendency to catch one end of them and catapult small parts across the workshop.

This was taken on my birthday.  Car coming back together at last.

[Mad Ax 11171]

Now we're on the 24th Feb.  The car had been in my possession for a few weeks by this point, and still wasn't assembled, but that's OK because the local club still hadn't resumed racing - the building was closed before Christmas for some work which, like most building work done on behalf of a local organisation, was massively overrunning.  I wanted the car ready for when racing resumed, so I had to get over my hatred of building shocks and, well, build shocks.

I set these up in standard trim, although I didn't drill the shock tops to vent them as per the setup sheet.  The previous owner hadn't done that either.  Possibly because it's a one-way mod, mostly because I don't have the stupidly small drill bit required to do the job.

eurgh.  So glad I bought new eyes.

I had another problem here that the balls wouldn't screw in without feeling like they were stripping the thread.  These were all-new lower mounts, so I took a closer look and discovered the screws used to hold them on are too long.  I used 6mm screws and they should be 4mm.  I hadn't noticed when I'd stripped it down, and I didn't have any 4mm screws in the pot.  Could I have used them elsewhere on the car by mistake?

At this point there was a full strip-down of the whole entire car to find those pesky 4mm screws, but I couldn't find them anywhere.  My only assumption is that the car was incorrectly assembled, and (as per the alloy hubs above) the long screws had damaged the threads.  Annoyingly, no part number is listed for these mysterious 4mm screws, so I've had to buy stainless ones instead of the lovely gold ones that should be supplied with the kit.  So assembly was halted once again while I waited for a tiny bag of screws to arrive.

Finally - on 28th Feb - the car was mostly back together...

[Mad Ax 11171]

8th March rolled around and the car still wasn't running, as I'd been putting a lot of time into my hillwalking truck instead.  But I had a morning in the workshop, so I decided to have one final push and get it ready to go.  With the practice round of the endurance championship just 2 weeks away, time was running out to actually get some TC driving in before the big day.

I pulled the Savox servo out of my T4F 2019, which I absolutely love but can't drive for toffee and haven't driven for a few years.

Then the trusty Hudy deck and my never-used Schumacher glass board came out.  The board was a raffle prize and has remained unopened in the box behind my workbench as scenery for several years.

I set everything up mostly stock, or as much as I could.  I'd chosen to refit the proper top arms with the dual adjusters for camber and caster, but then realised my Hudy caster gauge doesn't work with the Schumacher hubs.  There is a special adapter from Schumacher but has been out of stock for a while.  Maybe that's why the previous owner went back to basic arms?  Kind of annoying, really.  I went as best as I could by eye.

Here it is, all ready to go.

[Mad Ax 11171]

So, what happened next?  Well, the local club still isn't open, and the practice round of the endurance championship is this Sunday.  However, there is another club local to me (actually even closer), and one I raced at a lot round 15 years ago.  That's where the team captain of our endurance team races every week, and he offered me a drive on the TRF-421 if I could get myself along.  So I made special arrangements with the wife (usually we spend Monday together) and made the 20 minute drive last night to see some very old friends and do some racing.

I was put in the C group, the slowest of the TC heats.  That was fine by me since my Mi-8 was a complete unknown quantity, but I wanted to race that first before taking out Alistair's 421.  I at least wanted to see how bad my carpet racing skills were before I crashed someone else's prized possession.

For a car that has literally just been put back together with an out-of-the-box setup and brand new, not-even-cleaned tyres on it, it was very, very good.  The most planted TC I've ever driven.  It was a little tail happy coming out of the corners, and took some time for me to calibrate my head and give it less throttle, but it was a very smooth heat with next to no crashing.

It was pretty slow, though - I don't have a lot of 48dp pinions and I'd gone with the smallest one that came with the car, on the basis that the previous owner was running it outdoors where it would want much taller gearing than it does in a little town hall.  Well it turns out it was geared way too low, and I was miles off the pace because of that.  But no bother - I was absolutely blown away by how good it was, and I was actually sad that I'd have to pull my receiver and transponder out of it to set up the 421 for round 2.

An hour later and I was back on the track again, this time with a properly sorted car that my team captain has been peddling around the A finals for some time.  The buzzer went off and I drove away and...  straight into a spin.

It was all but impossible to drive - like driving on ice.  Understeer on turn-in, oversteer on corner exit, like a drift car.  I wobbled around for 5 minutes mostly trying to stay out of the way, then came in feeling incredibly disappointed.

So it turns out I didn't have the best set of tyres on.  Luckily another friend had a scrubbed-in set to get me going, so I put those on and gave them some additive (which I thus far hadn't bothered with).

Week-night racing is a short and sweet affair - 2 heats and a final - so I only had one more chance to learn the TRF.  I did a couple of practice laps and it felt much better - still a little over-steery, but driveable.  I hoped it would get better as the tyres warmed up.

Sadly, 2 laps in and I drifted wide on the sweeper and clipped the track edge.  I was still struggling to turn in there - not sure if I had a fundamental lack of grip or if it's just my driving.  Well, the car came off the barrier without too much fanfare, then suddenly swerved across the track.  The front wheel was hanging off.  Not the one I'd hit the barrier with, the inside one.

The thread had gone in the plastic hub, and the arm had pulled out.  TBH that might have been my problem in the previous heat.  The car owner put the ball back in while I waited on the rostrum, and I got a few more laps in before it went again.

[Mad Ax 11171]

So - in summary - the Schumacher was an absolute dream, I totally loved it and can't wait to give it another try once the Friday club has reopened.

The TRF-421, on the other hand, wasn't able to show me its best on the night.  This wasn't the actual car we'll be driving in the endurance race - that one was in the hands of our star driver, getting some setup tweaks - this is the spare, which will be stripped down into pre-assembled corners ready to go on the race car if we have any kind of failure on Sunday.

I'll start a new thread about the endurance championship next week