Another Reminder of Why You Don't Need All Those Spares.

You may have seen my post with various enclosed trailer questions. The backstory on this is all to familiar.

A long time friend put his race car up for sale but the ad was rather cryptic. Concerned I made an excuse to go by his place by asking what he planned to do with the trailer. He texted back for me to come and get it. This made me even more concerned.

While there picking up the trailer we were able to talk more. Now retired he doesnt have the budget to run the car the way he wants and he isn't the type to be content mid pack. His faculties are also not what they once were.

He has years of parts built up; things like a couple of dozen crankshafts to mention a few of the spares.

His biggest fear is all of this stuff will end up in a dumpster. I didn't dare tell him but the likelyhood is very high that that's exactly what will happen.

In 37 years of racing I've seen this play out 4 or 5 times and each time it's just soul crushing to see.

The reality for racers is you don't need 4 engine blocks or 9 brake calipers or whatever else you think you do. You may have everything neatly organized and have plenty of shop space for this stuff but at the end of the day the time and energy gathering this stuff could always be put to better use, like spending more time with friends.

I am not immune to this myself; several years ago, after a death in the family, and the subsequent clean out, I decided not burden friends or family with the task of throwing away my treasure of Sierra Madre. 

I wrote down all the parts that wore out over the previous 25 years and figured what I really needed. I most certainly didn't need a 120 year supply of brake drums or a 70 year supply of water pump gaskets. I kept one extra of things like waterpump alternator, starter along with a couple of gasket sets. I sold or gave away the rest. I currently still have a 15 to 20 year supply that fits on one shelf in my cabinet. If I were gone tomorrow the spares would fit in a medium size box that the new owner of my car could carry away with the car.

We can tell ourselves we need this stuff but if you write down how many years worth of stuff you have, you suddenly realize you don't. You just don't.

LALALALA not listening, I can't hear you.   Ok, fine I'll clean out the garage this year...if I can find the time.

What about building materials and plumbing bits, I'll need those someday right?  Box of computer wires, phone stuff, component stereo wires, does it all have to go?  

Yes, yes it all has to go.

Case in point 

 RX7 ad

And I took that personally.

I keep selling stuff and selling stuff then more gets handed to me. If I say no it goes in the dumpster or scrap bin. So I say yes and sell stuff and sell stuff. At this point I should probably be honest and admit it's a side business and not a hobby. 
 

good reminder though. I need to set up beers with friends. 

chandler said:

Case in point 

 RX7 ad

Saw that yesterday.  Would be a good addition to the brown RX7 for PB&J Racing.  Did just see this note:
 

"Edit 2/29 unfortunately am scrapping all the parts, car itself available thru sat 1k. Keep 2 complete kegs, one complete trans. Complete trans in a box. No case. Everything internal. Every brand new Mazda bagged parts, wearables."

And I have been trying to think of what spares I *should* look into getting for the drift car. 

Mostly had thoughts of wheel bearings due to side lateral forces on them, but at the same time, a bearing can make noise a long time before catastrophic failure (If I hear if being noisy on track I can probably survive the rest of the event or just call it a day and get it on the trailer) and any impact hard enough to wreck a bearing will take out control arms and while I might have spares of those, (e36 lower rears require reinforcement so I'd probably buy a set, reinforce, install, then reinforce the old ones and throw on the shelf) I'm not going to carry a complete suspension for the car to every event. But working at Napa, getting the parts is inexpensive so I don't *need* to keep a bunch of parts on hand, until I start to see common consumables getting harder to get, then maybe order spares? (or if I am planning on going to an event further than the 2hr drive, then some spares on hand maybe worth it)

I think my only saving grace is like 80% of the parts for the drift car also work on the one street car (one of the rotors are different size between 94 and 98, 94 has a sbc and a t5), so there's a chance the street e36 would need parts in the future as well, including body panels, I can see myself maybe hoarding some extra body panels if I come across relatively clean examples.

I do plan on keeping oil filters on hand in general (3 of 4 trucks share the same filter, 2 of the 4 cars share the same filter) and probably stopping there. I do plan on possibly reducing the fleet of vehicles at least. 

jmabarone said:

chandler said:

Case in point 

 RX7 ad

Saw that yesterday.  Would be a good addition to the brown RX7 for PB&J Racing.  Did just see this note:
 

"Edit 2/29 unfortunately am scrapping all the parts, car itself available thru sat 1k. Keep 2 complete kegs, one complete trans. Complete trans in a box. No case. Everything internal. Every brand new Mazda bagged parts, wearables."

That's the note, and that's what always happens. I have multiple rabbits and BINS of parts and I've thought about just scrapping all the parts myself. I woke up but the thought was there.

When we moved, I found new brake rotors for a racecar that I hadn't owned in over ten years.

I guess I should back up my nothing response in the other thread as I keep plenty of consumables around. Oil filters a plenty as I can use the same filter on my Avalanche as well on the suburban and I think they'll fit my mustang too. I have plenty of cheap wiper blades. Plenty of oil, trans fluid, brake cleaner, gear lube, rtv, etc....

Edit: I still have to go through all the kept stuff my dad had for pintos.... Michigan, rust belt, cheap econobox, you bought every car you could afford and kept the good stuff and junked the rest.

Just found a spare rotor for a car we sold 7 years ago...

When I bought the Z I had a truck of stuff to bring home.  Thirty percent went to the scrap guy - mainly I was helping the guy clean out his garage as I didn't need all these extra parts - 20 rusty steel Datsun wheels? I kept a set of aluminum and a set of steel.  I can't keep all these parts. 
 

I need to get sorting and selling stuff from my garage, or it will be in a dumpster one day, too.

I have three Z car 4-speed manual transmissions and one is in great shape going into the car.  If it craps out I would prefer a 5-speed be put into its place.  One is pretty janky so do I store two trannys for the rest of my life?  LOL  

In reply to akylekoz :

This made me laugh......becuase yeah we all do this.

When I started cleaning out the garage, we had bins of carb parts. Nothing labeled or cleaned, just a myriad of carb parts, 1,2, and 4 barrel. I gave that away to a friend messing around with carbs as a side hustle. Also found a complete engine gasket kit for a Honda/Acura engine, which we have never owned. Also used shocks that were actual garbage. 

All of these things I was yelled at for tossing because 'They could have been useful!' Carbs sure, if we owned something with a carb. 

I am guilty of grabbing 'extras' of parts from junkyards if it's something I plan to 'make' fit or need to modify to get it to work with something I am adapting into place, especially interior pieces since old plastic likes to break.

Tom1200 said:

In reply to akylekoz :

This made me laugh......becuase yeah we all do this.

ive been good about some things, others not so much. but to have a spare set and a backup spare set of everything is nice and comes in handy as rally is just abusive on everything but then when you get 3 sets of spares I find myself wanting to hodge podge something with those spare parts but realize i dont have the time to do so and things will sit. However I am not planning on having 3 sets of spares, i am lucky to have 1 set of spares for my concern items and maybe a backup set to keep in the garage. 

This worked in my favor when I bought the turbo rx7, I basically built it out of spare parts and sold it for profit - I may just recondition FCs honestly since I have so much spare parts and hands on experience, I think I am inheriting a 1990 rx7 lemons car too in the near future so that will be interesting 

And what do you do with the boxes of old books and magazines ?

I do not think they will be popular like old vinyl records did !

Good luck to all of us :)

In reply to californiamilleghia :

Magazines get recycled after i read them unless my car is in it and books get passed along or donated. 
 

nobody look in my garage. Or basement. Or the attic of my dad's garage. Or his barn. Nothing to see there

I have a new, large shop and I'm fighting this so hard already...

I have a buddy with serious hoarder problems and he's so excited to bring me E36 M3 that he rescues somewhere.. "we can use this someday"... I had to tell him no, I want no parts storage in the shop, current project parts only, and I'm not keeping 19 "project cars" moldering away either. 

Yes I have the room, no, I don't want my daughters to inherit Sanford & Son.

I have my broken LS turbo swapped Lexus IS300, and my Z06 still to bring over here.  Trying to make that the limit.  Two non running cars at a time only.

Anybody need some BMW Xenon headlights, with controllers and levelers.    OK FINE, I'll pitch them.

My son and a couple of his friends split $400+ profit running scrap for me over Christmas break as I cleaned the car hobby storage from a couple buildings which will be demo'd soon. There were an additional 5-6 truck beds worth of dumpster fill, and a burn pile...

I'm purposely not allowing myself the space to repeat such behavior going forward.

During the pandemic a young guy came and bought some stuff from me. As he was mentioning other stuff he needed I'd hand it to him.

I viewed it as a pay it forward.

I was happy to have a huge hoard of calipers for my rx7 because I needed to go through six different calipers to get a pair with bleeders that opened and pistons that weren't corroded.

You only don't need it until you do, and throwing money at the problem won't help if new or reman parts are not available at any price.

akylekoz said:

Anybody need some BMW Xenon headlights, with controllers and levelers.    OK FINE, I'll pitch them.

Give them to me, I'll sell them DAMMIT IM DOING IT AGAIN