For Sale, Slightly Used

For many NASCAR Winston Cup teams, it’s simply peace of mind. Selling race car parts that have served their purpose—regardless of how short a period of time that purpose may have required—is big business these days.

Among the larger, better-financed Cup operations, anything and everything has a price. And for everyone from up-and-coming ARCA or Busch teams all the way down the ladder to the local Saturday night racer, the price is often right.

From entire race-ready vehicles to the plain-old lug nuts that have spent less than 20 laps bolted on a car, Winston Cup teams provide a steady stream of used parts for the racing industry.

“Oh yeah, we sell anything from rear-end housings to fuel lines. The braided hoses are really expensive and we buy them in bulk. Saturday night racers eat that stuff up,’’ says John Bryan, jackman for the No. 28 Texaco/Havoline Ford and parts manager for Robert Yates Racing. “They can use it over and over where we do what we call ‘peace of mind.’ We would rather just replace the hose than worry about whether it has any trash in it, anything like that.”

“Stuff like high-pressure fittings—I sell those like crazy. Ignition boxes...we’re on a real good deal with MSD, so I’m allowed to sell those at a good price to Saturday night racers. We only use them two or three races—that’s not 1,000 miles. You’ve got drag racers that use them all season. Some will buy 10 or 12 and sit on them, (or) sell them to their buddies at the track.”

“There’s a lot of stuff I sell and a lot of stuff I don’t,” Bryan says. “As far as the motor end of it, we sell a lot of cylinder heads, but there are so many restrictions when you get into Saturday night racing. Some of them can only use steel heads. It kind of gets into some technical stuff there, but as far as the parts that I call the maintenance stuff—the hoses and fittings and that type of thing—I have people that just buy that stuff by the truckload. Nuts and bolts...a lot of our nuts and bolts we get for free. You give guys that come to you on a regular basis nuts and bolts. Otherwise, they would have to buy those. They don’t have the big sponsor going, ‘Hey, we’ll give you all the nuts and bolts, just run the sticker this big on the car.’ They don’t have that opportunity.”

“So what it actually does is free up space for me. If they can take two or three buckets of bolts and take lug nuts that we hit one time, rear-end housings that we might run four or five times, and then put in a fresh one, that clears up a lot of space.’’

Bryan also says a-frames, lower control arms, and items such as drive plates are sold mainly to ARCA or Busch teams.

“Because they can run the same configuration,’’ he explains.

Why buy used parts rather than new pieces that haven’t been used? For most local racers, it’s a matter of affordability. Building a competitive race car isn’t cheap, and opportunities to save money without cutting corners don’t go unnoticed.

“Our prices have become so affordable,’’ explains Mike Gross, parts manager for Bill Davis Racing. “For instance, if (a racer’s) rules allow cambered axles and the lengths are the same it’s a great deal for them. We pay $160 or so for cambered axles. We sell them after we use them one race for $35 so they’re very affordable.’’

Gross says prices for used Winston Cup pieces vary from team to team but not by much. How much a particular part brings depends on its condition and its availability on the market.

“First of all, I feel anything that is used is 50 percent of the original price right off the bat. Things such as axles where it is a wear condition—each one can wear differently, and you don’t know how it’s going to wear—we just set a nominal fee, something more than we would get if we sold it for scrap, and sell it at that,” Gross says.

“A lot of things you know move on a regular basis, like ignition boxes,” Bryan says. “I’m always going to be able to sell them. I don’t ever have to come down off the price. But a lot of stuff, it kind of varies. This axle cost me $140 or $160, and we ran it three or four races. But there’s not a big demand maybe for that part, so you kind of have to give it to them.”

“We have cracked rotors—those that have just surface stress cracks...not all the way through. I can sell them for $10 or $15 each. They’re $369 brand new. Cylinder heads, on the other hand, if they’re in good shape, you’re going to get pretty much 50 cents on the dollar. If we’ve got $4,000 in a set of cylinder heads, then you’re going to get about $2,000 to $2,200 for a set of used ones. That’s what brings you money, but you have to work with people.

“Those Saturday night racers, they’re not stupid. They do their homework. They’re reading magazines, looking at catalogs. They know what’s out there, and they know what it’s going for. My job is to try to keep on top of it and make sure I’m not under-selling or over-selling. I don’t want to lose any business because I don’t want to be stuck with all the parts.’’

Gross, a former sales manager at CV Products, also worked for nine years as general manager for BSR Products.

“I’ve been in the automotive parts business all my life,’’ he says. Prior to his arrival at Bill Davis Racing, the team didn’t have a systematic way of ridding itself of used parts.

“It was just haphazard,’’ he says. “If someone knew someone and wanted something, they pulled up out front. ‘Yeah, I think I have it, come and get it,’ that kind of thing. We’ve now actually developed a whole program for getting rid of the used stuff. We’ve sold 12 cars already this year. We have a separate storeroom where we keep everything...I know what we keep in there, what’s good. We don’t keep anything that’s bad. Anything bad we throw away—scrap it. All our stuff that is re-sellable, we keep. We know what’s there, we have a pricing system, and we try to get the word out that we have stuff for sale.”

“For instance, to sell the cars and parts and pieces, I went to Lowe’s Motor Speedway and put out a flier stating that we had cars for sale and engine parts and so on. Within five weeks, we’d sold every piece.’’

As for the complete cars, Gross says such items are sold primarily to ARCA teams.

“One team bought four cars alone. The champion, Frank Kimmel, is dying to get a speedway car from us, but we don’t have any more,’’ he says. “My cars average about $35,000 for everything but the engine. Most of my cars only have about 10 races on them before I sell ‘em.”

Buying directly from Cup teams, however, isn’t the only way for a weekend warrior to get his hands on used parts. Several companies offer those same parts, as well as new pieces, to the local racer.

“I’ve been doing this since 1993,’’ says Gary Kendley, owner of Gary’s Race Engine Parts. “I go around to Cup teams and buy their used parts, motors, then re-sell them to Saturday night racers.’’

Kendley deals only with engine parts—“just motors and transmissions,’’ he says. “I don’t do any chassis parts.”

“Most of the time, the stuff we get the teams have already cleaned up before we pick it up. There’s usually not a lot we have to do to it. It’s a lot cheaper for the racer than buying it brand new, and a lot of times we probably have a particular part or piece that they may not be able to locate otherwise.’’

Like the parts managers for the Cup teams, Kendley is in tune with the going prices.

“I know how much the stuff is going for on the market,’’ he says. “I sell a lot of stuff to engine builders, then they turn around and sell complete engines to teams. But I deal with teams on an individual basis as well.’’

Long-time racer John A. Utsman of Bluff City, Tennessee, knows the ins and outs of the used parts business. Before retiring at the end of the 1999 season, Utsman often purchased many of his engine parts directly from Robert Yates Racing.

Utsman, who has driven in relief for former Cup veterans such as Benny Parsons, and has won numerous Saturday night shows, says teams can save “several thousand dollars just in the engine alone.”

“And the thing about it,’’ he continues, “(is) we never had a piece break. Those guys run their stuff for 500 miles, or laps, or whatever, and we were just looking to go maybe 100 laps. And where they turn 9,000 rpms, I generally ran about 8,600.’’

Utsman says most of the parts are easy enough to find.

“The engine blocks are probably the hardest to come by, because they don’t have much trouble with them. Some people say you aren’t getting (the teams’) best stuff, but for the price, you can’t beat it. There are some local guys that buy the stuff brand new, but for the most part, guys running on dirt are running for maybe $1,500 and just can’t afford it,” he says.

For Winston Cup teams, it’s peace of mind. But for hundreds of Saturday night racers, purchasing used Winston Cup parts is an affordable way to go racing in an increasingly expensive sport.