Challenge question

I was taken off work last year for a "re-ocurance" of an on the job injury but the powers that be rejected my comp (dejavu  from the original injury) long story a little shorter, I sold my project car.  

Well, I've won my appeal, I go tomorrow to their doctor to determine how much back pay I get! (Maybe $0). 

What does that have to do with the challenge? The car has never been touched after I sold it, and the guy has offered to sell it back to me for $2200 including the parts he had purchased before his passion for the project died.

There are two sticking points, only one being really relevant I suppose.

1. he needs the money NOW and it will be months before (IF) I get paid the back pay.

2. He had no intention of putting the car back on the road and never put it in his name, so it's still technically in mine though the title is missing.

So, if I can get him under $2000 for the car and the pile of parts how would I budget it?

Free car because it's still technically mine and $x.xx for the pile of parts?

The car was originally intended as a challenge car when I had it and it has a personal history for me (it was my "midlife/divorce crissis" car) before it was totalled. It's a non running basket case with a torn up interior bad paint and some body damage but some part of me wants to hold onto it.

I've only got a short time to decide, it has been tagged to be towed two weeks from Friday so he wants an answer by day after tomorrow.

Sorry, but it’s definitely not free.  You sold it, and bought it back. 

In reply to SVreX :

So just list the car and the parts as one transaction?

In reply to crazier :

Were they one transaction?

In reply to SVreX :

Yes. I sold him the car and my whole pile of parts, now he wants to sell the car back to me with a bigger pile of parts.

My concern was the car is still registered to me.

I almost look at it like a loan. He gave you $$$ and is holding your car. You give him back his money and you get your car back.  Anything that was not part of that (the parts)  would be a separate transaction. 

I don’t see how the registration matters. 

You sold the car. He is selling it back. He failed to do the paperwork, but that is unrelated. 

In reply to dean1484 :

OP didn’t say anything about a loan. He said he sold the car. 

I bought a vehicle for a GRMer.  It sat at my house for a year and then they picked it up. It was open title from some PO who knows how far back. That GRMer sold it to me two years later with the same open title.  It's now titled in my name. I'm claiming what I paid for the vehicle from the  GRMer.  Title means nothing for the Challenge other than fees to get one are exempt. 

I think this is just a simple transaction; end of story.  

You buy a car and a pile of parts for $X.  $X is your starting point.  All other challenge rules apply.  

Status the the registration is out of scope for purposes of The GRM Challenge.  

Well, I'm all for the simple solution. I guess it just seemed more complicated to me than it actually was. 

Maybe I was trying to distract myself from the fact that his current ask is more than the budget. Not to mention I can't really afford it even if he comes down. 

Plus I'm really worried about tomorrow, 4 months pay, 3 weeks vacation time are on the line, and all the past and future medical bills.

In reply to crazier :

Good luck. Worksman's comp sucks when they try to screw you over.

I would think you could buy the car and some parts for $2000 and the rest of the parts in a separate transaction for $200

but if you can’t afford it, as the sage from Frozen once dang, Let it go!

Well. I'm thinking I will try to put him off until at least Thursday and then offer him the 2k and hopefully as the specter of that tow away tag gets a little closer he will bite.

I am confident he will take the 2, unless he finds anouther buyer. I "need" as many of the parts as possible to sell or I will have no budget. 

There are enough pieces to finish the intake swap and install the turbo but there will be all sorts of overlooked, lost or broken parts, plus I need at least a roll bar and I don't trust the ebay waste gate and BOV. And I either have to reroute the turbo pipes or relocate the alternator.

While you were asking about the car, I'm replying to wish you luck in your appeal.

In reply to Floating Doc :

Thanks! 

Isn’t there some rule that kind of addresses this kind of thing?  If I have a car and sell it to my friend for 3k. Then I purchase it back for 1.5k. I am not implying that the op is trying to pull a fast one in this case but it basically falls under this. 

Brian and I had this similar situation. He had purchased a car for over challenge budget. If I then purchased it from him for less than challenge budget would that be fair? Obviously not.  We knew this and moved on. 

Again I am in no way implying that the op is intentionally trying to pull a fast one. Life sometimes presents some weird situations. 

SVreX said:

In reply to dean1484 :

OP didn’t say anything about a loan. He said he sold the car. 

I know. I was putting it in a different context. 

Dean, that rule is (i just pulled into someone’s driveway to work so not quoting exactly) along the lines of it cannot be sold and repurchased to devalue it.  This situation sounds legit and if he buys it for 2k he’s basically starting at the same point it sounds like.  I believe it’s more of an “I bought my wrx for $2750 then ‘sold’ it to john brown for $1200 then he ‘sold it back’ for $1200 because he never keeps anything longer than a week” clause to keep some shenanigans from happening.  I have faith that the core group of challengers wouldn’t do this and most of the worry that it might happen comes from people that’ll probably never attend the event.  There’s so much chatter on the forum about event integrity but it’s never by the competitors themselves, who self police really well.  Not firing shots at non attendees, just an observation and any talk about the event is cool to me because it keeps it out front all year instead of just one weekend in October.  

Citing stampie’s case above, he “bought” the vehicle on my behalf so in my opinion he never owned it, much like i would do and have done for grm’ers in the past.  I asked him to go look for me and get it and as soon as i knew the cash he fronted for me i paypal him immediately.  It’s my fault i lost money on the deal, and has nothing to do with him.  If he bought it then sold it to me, then i sold it back at half price i could see some questioning of that transaction.   But he was nothing more than a buyer’s agent on the deal willing to make the deal and store it for 8 months for free.  

I agree with you completely I just don’t want the GRM people to look at him funny at the last moment. That would suck. Sometimes rules prevent perfectly ok things from happening. 

Tim, tom and the rest of the staff are super awesome and understanding of real life situations, it’s way more laid back than people realize.  

I think you should have him itemize. Give an honest assessment of what the car is worth and what the parts are worth. A totaled shell might be $500 whereas the parts are $1500.

Would that hold up, Challenge regulars?? It makes a ton of sense to me.

In reply to dculberson :

Yes, it would work. But “honest assessment” isn’t really even necessary. Great bargains and discounts show up regularly. 

But that different than being honest. 

If you buy the package for $2000, it is a single purchase, single receipt. Deal with it. It goes in the budget as a $2000 purchase. That’s honest. 

But if you pay $500 for the car, and $1500 for some spare stuff that will not end up on the Challenge car with 2 different receipts, it’s a $500 budget hit. That’s still honest.  You just can’t take anything from the parts pile and use it on the Challenge car.  Makes no difference to the seller, but it might make a big difference to your Challenge budget.

Negotiating and managing the budget elements is a big part of the Challenge. 

The $2200 asking price is $700 more than I sold it to him for, though I did not save documents from the sale. It was a low-ball price, but I was desperate.

His plan was the same as my original plan to make it "nice" but you can't polish a turd. I think he gave up after getting an idea of the cost to replace the dash and the targa top, estimate I got way back when was almost $4000 but that included the radio amp and speakers.

There are now additional parts some that I don't need, but will definitely take for resale, and some like the braided fuel line and kirban regulator that I never would have bought but I am very glad to have, and probably a few that were there that are no longer (like my make shift fuel lines)

He claims he is going to lose a bunch of money at $2200... Yeah, probably, but not my problem.

Between the interior, the paint, the body damage to the rear, the targa top and all the little incidentals, he would probably have to spend another 10 or $12k to make it nice.

You can buy a lot of car for 14 grand! 

P.S. the last thing the doc said to me today was that OWCP owes me money (meaning he believed it was work related from that prior injury, I think, though he isn't allowed to say so) and that he hoped I would get it. Anyone who has ever dealt with OWCP knows that there is no guarantee even when their doctor is on your side.

Off the dude $500 cash the day before it gets towed and then walk away if he will not bite. he wants it gone and needs some money. or gets screwed out of nothing when they tow it. his choice.