I think you got it there, Charlie.
Some stuff is simple off-and-on. Some is more complex. You never know from
one to another. The real key is that you cannot disadvantage a competitor by
forcing him to potentially damage his investment by requiring him to submit
to having someone incompetent to do the work. By the same token, it is
unreasonable for me to demand that only "my guy" can even twist the first
nut to take it apart.
Actually, taking things apart is usually the easy part. It's the putting it
back together again -- correctly -- where the tricky part comes in. So no,
you don't have to fly my guy in, but if it is more than a superficial
off-and-on teardown (which we could probably do in the protest bay) you may
have to cover the cost of my shipping the engine back to him to reassemble.
Then again, maybe it isn't fly my guy in from Michigan to do the work. Maybe
it's get Kent Prather, who lives in Topeka, to come do it -- someone more
handy who I trust. He's not my engine guy, but he knows LBCs, is a 5-time
national club racing champ, and has done other work on my car. IOW, it is
probably unreasonable for any protestee to insist only one person can touch
his car -- I'm just using myself as an example here of issues that can
present themselves -- but he should at least have the comfort of knowing
whoever does is someone he has faith in. The more complex the job, and the
more performance-oriented the item being looked at (a competition-prepped
engine instead of a stocker, for example), the more necessary it is that the
person doing the work be knowledgeable about this particular application.
Your average ASE-certified mechanic does not have the same expertise as
someone who builds race motors.
You wanna just pop the head off? Okay, buy me a couple of gaskets and we can
do it right here. You want to pull it out and disassemble the thing? It's
going back to Michigan in a basket for reassembly. If -- *IF* -- I am legal,
that's on your nickel. Most protests, I suspect, would fall in the former
category. Even those I have seen which were shopping lists that would have
required complete disassembly, were often abandoned after 1-2 items were
checked (if they were legal, protestor was satisfied; if they were illegal,
it was enough to DQ).
You wouldn't have your family practice doctor do your open-heart surgery.
He's a very good family practice doctor, he knows how a heart functions and
he could probably go in there and work on it if it was an emergency, but
he'd rather defer to the specialist. For work on a specialized
competition-prep unit in the car, you want the specialist.
--Rocky
----- Original Message -----
From: <Smokerbros@aol.com>
To: <autox@autox.team.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 11:13 PM
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: shop manuals
> In a message dated 3/4/04 7:53:12 PM Pacific Standard Time, rocky@tri.net
> writes:
>
>
> > If you are wanting to look into MY competition-prepared engine not just
any
> > old engine, and you lose the protest, you pay what it costs to
reassemble MY
> > engine to its standard not the cost to reassemble any old motor to stock
> > factory specs. (My guy charges almost a grand just to disassemble the
> > thing!).
> >
> > MY engine does not get built by Shadetree Joe, I don't expect to have to
> > endure his level of expertise (or lack of same) to un-build it just
because
> >
>
> So, if you are protested on something where just the head comes off, and
it
> has to come off at the event in order to adjudicate the protest, what do
we do?
> Fly in "your guy" at the protestor's expense? Any competent shop can
take
> that head off and re-assemble it at the flat rate amount. That part isn't
> rocket science. A complete engine teardown? That's obviously more
money...
>
> Charlie
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