if it's on the car, it's in the budget. the only things not counted against the budget are the safety items (including stock replacement brake parts) as mentioned in the post above.
so if you buy a complete car for $xxx, every single part that is on the car is covered by the purchase price. anything you sell off, rather than keep it on the car for the challenge, is deducted from the $xxx until $xxx =$1. Total deductions (aka "recoup") can not exceed
(EITHER) 50% of the challenge year -- ie $1005 this year -- (OR) 100% of the amount you spent on the source of what you're selling off.
Don't sell all the way down to zero! more on that later.
if you remove a part from the car and trade it to someone for some other part, then you put that traded part onto the car, you have to document the trade in your budget with an "FMV" (fair market value) for the parts on both sides of the trade, ie nobody's gonna believe you traded some worn-out snow tires on steelies for a set of A6s on Fikses.
Why not sell down to zero? because of the way the trade rule is written. it says you can only trade until the recoup limit is reached. so if you never reach the recoup limit, you can trade to your heart's content.
Examples: buy a $1500 car, sell $1005 of unnecessary parts, budget is now $495 but you've hit the recoup limit so can't put any more money back into the budget and you can't trade.
Or, buy a $1500 car and sell $1500 of unnecessary parts. budget is still $495 because you can't recoup more than $1005. no trading.
Or, buy a $1500 car and sell $1004 of unnecessary parts. budget is now $496 but you can trade your ass off. ;-)
read the rules. then read them some more. then figure out how what you want to do is legal.
