Greetings all! Long-time dreamer, somewhat long-time lurker, first-time poster starting to think more seriously about my build.
I live in Portland and will be building and eventually registering my car here. It will be a fairly traditional Locost (so easily identifiable as a Lotus Seven replica) and AE86-based with Chevette front spindles. I plan to do as much of the work as possible myself including the frame. I may buy fiberglass rather than mold it myself, and may pay someone to weld my front A-arms and may get someone to do upholstery. I have owned and messed around with Corollas for more than 15 years and have owned multiple AE86's over the years. When you do your own wrenching and have a fleet of the same model of cars, one tends to accumulate a bunch of extra parts. I bought and sold a rally car years ago (kept many of the spares) and am considering selling one of my two remaining Corollas as a complete car. It would be easiest for me to sell the Corolla complete to fund the Locost, and use the spares for the Locost build.
My concern is that I don't have many big spares with receipts.
If only I had my current hindsight when pulling lots of parts at the junkyards years ago, I might not be in this dilemma. If I have a 7-8 year old bill of sale for a racecar plus parts (and the parts are all I have left) how does that look as a receipt for the engine, especially if it isn't referenced specifically on the bill of sale, and the serial number for the spare engine isn't tied to the car I used to own?
Worst case scenario is to use the Corolla I plan to sell as a donor, but I hate to part out a good car unnecessarily, and the cash from selling it complete will also be nice. If needed, I could generate some paperwork while selling the Corolla if I know that it will help with the future Locost. I am close with much of the local Corolla-enthusiast community, so I am thinking along the lines of selling the Corolla as a project with the spare engine, and keeping the original engine (serial number tied to the car I now own) with appropriate paperwork upon selling it to make it clear where the engine came from. The other thought was to sell the Corolla with spares package to a buddy, and then as I get closer on the build, have him sell the spare engine back to me
and draw up paperwork for each of the transactions so that I have a spare engine with a bill of sale.
Any Oregonians out there have experience in this regard? Do I need something more official than a typical bill of sale used when buying/selling private-party used cars?
Thanks in advance, and I look forward to posting more from here on out.