Jury of Peers Questions

I have a couple of questions regarding application of rules within the spirit of the Challenge. 

Question 1: Regarding the wear and tear / unforeseen failure rule, can this be applied to paint damage that occurs after previous Challenge appearances? If so, what would be a fair way to accomplish this or account for it?

As you can see in the pictures my Challenge car has suffered significant paint damage from the removal of Challenge decals and numbers as well as a cat that has for some reason decided to use it as a scratching post.

Question 2: Given that trades are encouraged and trades with yourself are allowed as long as you can establish legitimate FMV, if I were to remove the OEM Garret SR20DET T25 turbo (which is in good working condition) from my car and trade it for a cheap Chinese knockoff GT2871 turbo and a few of small parts that all together cost the same or less than the FMV on the used Garret T25,  would this be kosher and within the spirit of the rules? 

Completed Ebay sales put the FMV of an OEM Nissan T25 between $150 and $300. (Some at the low end even need a rebuild before they can be used.) The Chinese GT2871 knockoff only cost $110.

(I do have saved Ebay sales listings that I can post later.)

Conceivably, you're going to get decals for the next round of Challenge stuff.  So put those over the paint?  Seems like you could save future paint by putting the decals on a magnetic backing, as I saw this previous year.

I think the important question for #1 is "what do you want to do about it?"
Cat claw marks may be able to be buffed out.

bigben said:

Question 2: Given that trades are encouraged and trades with yourself are allowed as long as you can establish legitimate FMV, if I were to remove the OEM Garret SR20DET T25 turbo (which is in good working condition) from my car and trade it for a cheap Chinese knockoff GT2871 turbo and a few of small parts that all together cost the same or less than the FMV on the used Garret T25,  would this be kosher and within the spirit of the rules? 

Completed Ebay sales put the FMV of an OEM Nissan T25 between $150 and $300. (Some at the low end even need a rebuild before they can be used.) The Chinese GT2871 knockoff only cost $110.

(I do have saved Ebay sales listings that I can post later.)

I'm not a big fan of this FMV self-trading stuff to get around a legit purchase. There are two ways that are definitely budget legit to do this: 

1. If you already have a line in your budget for the current turbo, by removing the turbo you remove that line from the budget like it never happened. Then you add your new purchases to the budget.
2. If you don't have a separate line item for the turbo, you could sell your turbo and the proceeds go towards recoup (if you haven't hit the limit). This is where FMV would come in. You could "sell" the turbo to yourself at the price of FMV. Then you buy your new turbo setup. But you can't just take parts off your car and self-trade for other parts when in reality you bought the new parts, because that cheats the recoup system. Unless you can actually find someone to legitimately trade with.

maschinenbau said:

 

I'm not a big fan of this FMV self-trading stuff to get around a legit purchase. There are two ways that are definitely budget legit to do this: 

1. If you already have a line in your budget for the current turbo, by removing the turbo you remove that line from the budget like it never happened. Then you add your new purchases to the budget.
2. If you don't have a separate line item for the turbo, you could sell your turbo and the proceeds go towards recoup (if you haven't hit the limit). This is where FMV would come in. You could "sell" the turbo to yourself at the price of FMV. Then you buy your new turbo setup. But you can't just take parts off your car and self-trade for other parts when in reality you bought the new parts, because that cheats the recoup system. Unless you can actually find someone to legitimately trade with.

To your point #2, you skipped a step. Between buying the replacement part and self-trading it at some FMV, you put it into your parts stash. Like it or not, that is compliant with the letter of the rule. Does it violate "don't be a dick"? Maybe, maybe not, that's a subjective question. 

yeah, I also read FMV self-trades as 'not against the letter of the rules'. I'm also not a huge fan. But the way I 'rationalize' to myself is this:

1. The original turbo is already in budget somewhere. 

2. The original turbo is not on the car during the competition. 

3. As long as the FMV is established to be similar (and not cheaty, like picking top end prices for existing part and low end prices for new part), then ok.

It does seem like this rule could be leveraged to the moon and back. I haven't seen it done yet. For example, you can buy as many miatas (or mustangs) as possible with 3k. (that'd be like, what, 6 or 7?) recoup 1k. Then start FMVing all the parts you have left over. I'd bet you end up with nearly 10k in FMV. Then you self trade that 10k FMV in parts for 20 more miatas from your "stash". FMV all that new junk for say 50k to use on self trades for parts you already had in your "stash" (which you don't of course, you just buy them as needed, put them in your stash for a moment, and then self-trade). So I feel like the self trade rule is a currently open loophole for someone who wants to run a parts warehouse for a few years. 

OP, did you do a paint job in the original budget? If so, I say no harm no foul in removing those line items and re-doing the whole paint job. If you want to redo the whole thing. 

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

No paint in the budget sheet, that's where it gets tricky. I can't really replace the damaged paint with equivalent paint. I can spray the whole car, but that makes the whole appearance better than it was. Unfortunately the new decals are smaller and won't cover the damaged area and I think the cat scratches are too deep to buff out. (Buffing may at least make them less noticeable.)

Here's what I'm thinking may be possible options.

Option 1: I have a quart of 18yr old fleet paint on the shelf that may be enough to spray the car if I skip the hood and door jambs but I'd have to buy a new bottle of hardner. I could exempt the paint or the hardner, whichever has a lower value, and charge the other to the budget.

Option 2: I use some vinyl to make some graphics to cover the peeled off paint, probably some sort of stripes and live with the damage that can't be easily hid by the stripes. Count the vinyl as the repair part and exempt it from the budget.

Sorry, but your paint wouldn't fall under the wear and tear exemption:

Parts may not be replaced at no budget impact under this rule if they were broken or heavily degraded when the car was purchased, or if the competitor knew failure was likely due to modifications.

I'm seeing heavily degraded paint, sorry about that.

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:      ......Between buying the replacement part and self-trading it at some FMV, you put it into your parts stash. Like it or not, that is compliant with the letter of the rule. Does it violate "don't be a dick"? Maybe, maybe not, that's a subjective question. 

That's precisely why I bought it up. To me it seems to fit the letter of the rule, but is it creatively working within the constraints of the rules or is it in the realm of being a prick?  I'm of the opinion that self trades are a slippery slope and should be used judiciously. 

In this case the value of the Chinese turbo is less than the low end of FMV for the original Garrett turbo.

(Garrett turbo came with the engine and does not have a separate budget line. I also don't want to actually get rid of the original because I don't trust the longevity of the China turbo. I may have to reinstall the Garrett after the Challenge.)

I have drawn a DBAD line in the sand against purchasing a part solely to put it in my stash for trade based on the highlight above which states that FMV can only be used on parts without a receipt.

If a self-trade is based on FMV, as also highlighted, receipted parts would be excluded from self-trades.

Losing receipts or otherwise bringing newly purchased parts into my budget using FMV would not be kosher IMO. YMMV.

In reply to gumby :

That's not how I interpret it. If you're a parts-hoarder & say you have a stash of LS heads, but you know what you paid for each of them. The LS engine already in your Challenge car has less desirable heads, & you want to swap them for a better set. However, since those heads were attached to the engine when you bought it, you'd need to FMV the heads you don't want to use vs. the ones you bought that you want to install.  So if the heads you don't want to use are worth $50-each & the ones you do are $75-each, it would be a $50 hit to your budget to run the pair of them. 

Does that make sense?

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

To your point #2, you skipped a step. Between buying the replacement part and self-trading it at some FMV, you put it into your parts stash. Like it or not, that is compliant with the letter of the rule. Does it violate "don't be a dick"? Maybe, maybe not, that's a subjective question. 

This is my assessment of the rule too.  

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

This is one area of the Challenge rules where personal interpretation definitely comes into play. I can see where your example makes sense, but it only uses FMV on one side of the trade because the stashed heads have a documented purchase price. I wouldn't put that trade in my budget; but that's just like my opinion, man.

There are a million ways to break the budget down. E.G. At what point is the engine you bought considered a parts lot rather than a complete engine? Etc. etc.

The bottom line is, every interpretation is correct until someone throws paper. When a guy can swap a 5.3 in place of a 4.8 under the(now updated) emergency repair/wear&tear exemption without anyone on site filing a protest, that says everything we need to know about rules enforcement.

Tom Suddard said:

Sorry, but your paint wouldn't fall under the wear and tear exemption:

Parts may not be replaced at no budget impact under this rule if they were broken or heavily degraded when the car was purchased, or if the competitor knew failure was likely due to modifications.

I'm seeing heavily degraded paint, sorry about that.

Thanks for your reply Tom.  I concede that the paint is degraded, but it's also quite dirty in those pictures.  Cat scratches and missing paint aside the car actually cleans up and looks pretty good from 10 ft away.  I can agree that a complete repaint would be an improvement and not within the scope of the rule. However, let me put one more argument before the court.

The cat scratches and missing paint is unrelated to the original condition of the paint.  As frustrating as the scratches are I can see there is no way to remedy them without also violating the intent of the rule.  However, the paint that was ripped off while attempting to remove the sponsor decals seems to me to fit well into the wear and tear/unforseen failure.  The paint in these locations was in good shape and looked good before the sponsor stickers were applied.  The paint was smooth and shiny and there was no flaking.  The small areas of missing paint on each door was a result of the 2016 Challenge number decals and the fender paint damage is a result of the 2019 Challenge sponsor decals.  The biggest issue is the drivers fender where a 9"x 11" area was peeled off by the sticker and possibly more when I remove the lower part of the decal.Here is a picture from the 2016 Challenge for comparison.  As you can see, other than the existing chips on the side skirts the paint looks pretty nice from 10ft away.  Now thanks to the adhesive of the sticker my nice shiny fender is now quite ugly. 
So what would be a fair way to address this?  Repaint the car to fix the removed paint? Nope not fair. 

The only option that I see to address the damage caused by the Challenge decal removal that would be within the spirit of maintenance or repairing unforseen damage to return it to like for like condition is to cover the damaged paint on the fender with stickers or strip of vinyl.  The new sponsor decals are smaller and die cut (which I really like) but are too small to cover the damage. So that really only leaves covering the area with a simple fender stripe.  Can I get buy in to repair the damage by adding a budget neutral fender stripe? (something like the vertical black ones on this)

Got to throw it out there I find automotive paint free on Craiglist all the time. Picked up an entire gallon of Sherman William pro with hardner at like 30$ as well once in a good cream white. 

I have also had really good luck making "matte" paint by knocking down the shine with red 3M pads over the whole car. gives it a real industrial look. 

I like the idea of the fender stripes to cover the damage. Probably the cheapest way to do it and make it look like a "race" car.  I also really like the opel GT.

Robbie

Dont give away my master plan to exploit the FMV trade rule.  Next you'll start talking about my plan to trade rare coins for car parts. 

In reply to Andy Neuman :

that's what I'm talking about!

I just go with clear coat on Leper Pariah. I am really just here for the Opel content, you can see mine eyeing the shop.

I had the same thing happen last year when taking off the stickers. I just used 0.99 flat black spray paint.  Also you  could paint that car for 50.00 in a single stage paint.