Challenge rules and vehicle trades

In reply to KyAllroad (Jeremy) :

No. 

You'd have to include the purchase price of the Monster Miata, the price to rebuild, AND the $2000 cash. That’s more than $4K in expenses- you can’t recoup that much. 

If you had even traded the Monster Miata for the eco tech  Miata, then it would be Challenge legal. But you wouldn’t have anything left in your budget. 

with a 6 grand cap the,( Challenge ) may be Not building Suicide Machines, Fastest Street Car Show could get outta Hand.

In reply to SVreX :

No no, i paid $2,000 for the monster.  Sold some seat covers and wheels off it to buy the transmission I needed so I was still at (for the sake of arguement) $2,000 dollars.  I traded it for the ecotec miata and he paid me $2,000 to boot (my original cost).  By my maths this means my car is free to me.

In reply to KyAllroad (Jeremy) :

It is free to you, but not free for the Challenge because the maximum recoup is $1009, not the $2000 he gave you. At least that's the way I think the rules work.

#1 you're amazing at making deals!

#2 I think skunk is right that effectively you traded a car for a car and recouped $2000, which is more than the recoup limit, so you may only be able to claim $1009 of that $2000 as recoup. 

KyAllroad (Jeremy) said:

In reply to SVreX :

No no, i paid $2,000 for the monster.  Sold some seat covers and wheels off it to buy the transmission I needed so I was still at (for the sake of arguement) $2,000 dollars.  I traded it for the ecotec miata and he paid me $2,000 to boot (my original cost).  By my maths this means my car is free to me.

Ok, then it’s probably Challenge legal, but not free. Here’s the math:

Purchase Monster Miata: $2000

Purchase transmission:  $200 (made up number)

Recoup Sale of seat covers, etc: -$200

Budget spent: $2000

Recoup used: $200

Even trade for eco tech Miata. That means you have $2000 in the EM, and $200 consumed of the recoup. Additional money is irrelevant. $809 left of potential recoup.

...note that if the transmission/ seat covers/ wheels exceeded $1009, then you exceeded the recoup amount, and the car is not Challenge legal. 

But why is the additional money irrelevant?

Say I bought a car for $500 and sold the engine for $500 plus they also threw in a carb. Wouldn't that mean I now have an engineless car and a carb and $0 budget but $500 in recoup used?

In reply to Robbie :

Your question may be a Tom question.  I can only offer my opinion. 

My opinion is the money is irrelevant because it represents the labor Kyallroad put into the deal.  He put in a trans, and improved the car, by putting his own labor into it.  

If the money he earned for his labor was relevant, nothing would stop competitors from selling their cars from previous years for a profit (based on their labor), and trying to roll that money into the next year’s entry.

Similarly, Tom has already nixed monetary reductions based on compensation for your labor (I am recalling Stampie's shed removal example) 

My $0.02

My own example (which was shot down by the powers that be):

I bought a Lotus, and it included an engine, which I was not going to use. The engine was worth a couple hundred dollars. 

However, the block was stamped “Lotus”, and I wanted to make a table out of it. I was going to buy a piece of plate glass sand blasted with the Lotus logo. The glass would have cost me about $150 (which I would have put in my budget), and the finished table would have been worth over $1500. I wanted to put my labor into it, and use the proceeds as my recoup. 

Nope. Disallowed. 

I don’t see any difference with this example. 

Robbie said:

But why is the additional money irrelevant?

Say I bought a car for $500 and sold the engine for $500 plus they also threw in a carb. Wouldn't that mean I now have an engineless car and a carb and $0 budget but $500 in recoup used?

One more thing... I don’t think your example works. You just recouped more than the $500 purchase price (which is not allowed). You got the full $500 in cash, PLUS a carb.

The carb should be FMV. 

SVreX said:

Robbie said:

But why is the additional money irrelevant?

Say I bought a car for $500 and sold the engine for $500 plus they also threw in a carb. Wouldn't that mean I now have an engineless car and a carb and $0 budget but $500 in recoup used?

One more thing... I don’t think your example works. You just recouped more than the $500 purchase price (which is not allowed). You got the full $500 in cash, PLUS a carb.

The carb should be FMV. 

Well, the trading is unlimited, and you didn't recoup more in $$ than you spent. Functionally equivalent would have been to write the transaction in two 'parts': trade the intake on your engine for the carb, then sell the rest of the engine for $500. Then you would have a carb, engineless car, and $0 budget with $500 recoup used.

So, KY, I think you can say you bought the monster for 2k, used $200 in recoup to fix it, then sold the wheels for $809 (more than that in real life but you can only recoup 809 since you already used 200 of the 1009 recoup limit), and then traded the wheel-less monster for the ecomiata straight up. You don't have a challenge free car but your ecomiata starts with a budget number of $1191 (2000 minus the 809 recoup).

Which is pretty dang good.

SV, I see your point about the leveraging the labor however. For example if Andrew or Ed (or YOU) were to trade one of their completed challenge monsters they could likely find a market value of a lot more than $2018. But on the other hand, there is a labor value add in terms of buying a car for $500 and then selling the engine for $500. Just pulling the engine and listing it separate takes 5-8 hours of labor and is a value add to people like me who would rather just buy the engine. So I see this as probably a 'don't be a dick' gray area.

In reply to Robbie :

Pretty sure you just came up with the exact same dollar amounts that I previously did. 

SVreX said:

In reply to Robbie :

Pretty sure you just came up with the exact same dollar amounts that I previously did. 

Then I misunderstood you when you said budget used was 2000, recoup used was 200, and 809 was left in recoup available....

In reply to Robbie :

Are you doing all the numbers negative?

Ky already stated the transmission and the wheels were equivalent. You are putting a $200 expense for the trans, and an $809 recoup for the wheels. 

Where are you putting the $2000 spent (expense) on the Monster??

Like I said, it’s a Tom question. 

In reply to Robbie :

Yes, trading is unlimited.  And yes, you can trade for something of greater value.

I think where we differ is that you are trying to take 1 item (a car, an engine, etc) and count it as BOTH an item to trade, AND recoup value. 

By that argument, every time you trade up to an item of a greater value, you could recoup the cash difference. I think that is deeply outside the spirit of the event. 

An item can be traded. Or it can be sold for recoup. It can’t be both. 

But that is just my opinion. I will await a ruling from a higher court.

I’ll dig through this thread on Monday (I’m headed towards a camping trip right now and won’t have internet), but here’s a tip:

When the US Supreme Court hears a case, they make their decision based on the constitution, as well as the founding fathers’ understood intent when writing it. 

To make this call, I’ll be considering our constitution (the rules) as well as the Challenge’s founding fathers’ intent: for any lucky, motivated individual with tools and with $2018 in cash in their pocket to be able to recreate any car at the Challenge. 

Its apparent that some commenting have not read said rules. They can be found at GRMChallenge.com

SVreX said:

In reply to Robbie :

I think where we differ is that you are trying to take 1 item (a car, an engine, etc) and count it as BOTH an item to trade, AND recoup value. 

 

that is exactly where we differ - but I believe it should absolutely be recoup $ and a trade, IF you trade something for another thing AND money.

Any "thing" is always made up of an arbitrary number of smaller parts. So you two functionally equivalent transactions are:

1. I traded a sandwich for $10 and a fork

2. I traded a pickle for a fork and sold the rest of the sandwich to the same guy for $10

If #1 = #2, and #2 is legal (it would be), then how can #1 NOT be legal?

I'm saying KY gets to count his full recoup so he starts at $1109 budget spent with NO recoup left ($2000 spend, minus $200 recoup for trans, minus $809 recoup to max recoup when he sold/traded for ecomiata). Would be interested to see where Tom lands on this too (since it actually could impact my original question), but that is my opinion.

In reply to Robbie :

I realize those are functionally similar, but they are not factually the same if the receipt is for the sandwich in its entirety. 

If the receipt says $10 for a sandwich, it’s $10 for a sandwich.   If the receipt says $10 for a pickle, then it’s $10 for a pickle. 

You can’t renegotiate the individual pieces after the deal is made just to wiggle your way through the Challenge loopholes. 

But that is different than the core issue of accounting for an item as BOTH a trade AND recoup.  If that’s legal, I would say I will bring quite an interesting entry, but I’m confident Stampie will beat me to it!  

The Challenge hypothetical E36 M3 pile is getting deep early this year. 

Here's a very probable scenario for the challenge:

Car purchased with aftermarket mod (say cold air intake) for $2000. The Challenger finds someone who wants to trade a stock air intake and $50 for the aftermarket intake. The Challenger should be able to recoup the $50 right? (Regardless of how the receipt is "written")

These mental gymnastics are what has made me move away from challenge builds. I turn wrenches in order to shut off my mind by keeping my hands busy and dont like to mix the two. Interesting read, though...

First thing that occurs to me is that if we are talking about the jeep I dont think I ever wrote a receipt nor have I touched the money; if that makes any difference.

I never keep track of which way the wind blows when it comes to these issues but I hope you can trade the jeep for something good!

In reply to tb :

It is unlikely that I will end up trading the jeep for a challenge car, but I started this thread since I saw a sweet old rambler wagon listed for $3500 or so and thought "well it is the year of the wagon".

Mostly it is a thought exercise for me, but I like to keep my options open. Similarly I could probably sell the jeeps lift and swap back to stock suspension and lower it a little and I could possibly challenge the jeep itself (which is where the cai question comes from - I would try to trade the lifted suspension for a stock suspension plus some $$).

But really I think this thread transformed into kyallroad's ecomiata, and where it stands on budget. I really don't have a dog in that fight, but I do have an opinion and some logic to share. 

And if the internet isnt for sharing opinions...

Wow, I just read through this thread and I don't even know what question I need to answer anymore.

Bueller? What transaction/real-world case needs to be decided? I need to see a test case before I can rule. 

In reply to Tom Suddard :

How about the battery discussion here? Even better, can you tell us where Hoffa is buried?