Resale value deductible from $500 budget?

sticking to the letter of the law will require you to ask The Man rather than the opinions of a bunch of us keyboard warriors.

If you're going to be THAT GUY when you get to tech and want to argue / prove you only spent $500 or less, then you are going to want to be as specific as possible asking these questions/categorizations of the judge/BS inspector who is going to look over your car. For that, you need to know what race you are planning to attend and when. Once you have that, you can reach out to HQ and find out who the likely judges are going to be for that event, then you can directly email those particular judges and get their take / interpretation of the rules and build your car to tailor it to their interpretation, bring your documentation, and then you'll be golden.

If you are unsure where to start, go head and email Eric Rood directly. He LOVES talking nitty-gritty details, and will even go so far as to help you break down the BS value of, say, selling off fancy brass exhaust manifold nuts and wave washers and swapping on something cheaper like junkyard "pocket parts" of rusty nuts and pieces of soup can cut into circles with hand-punched holes in the center of each one.

Ooh, and if you are into chemistry, you can start going into the silver content of the solder that you can salvage from the car's electrical circuits and...

In short: no matter what you sell, for calculations you cannot go negative in value on either the car purchased or the parts cars. So you can add $0 value parts to your $0 value car all day long,  but you can't sell $3000 of parts off of your $2000 car and claim the undocumented parts you added still keep the car below $500 in value.

Some clarification:

I'm not going to argue BS laps with the judges or worry about it at all, really.  I just want the satisfaction of knowing I didn't cheat to get what I got, if that makes sense.  Like if I get some laps I can tell myself "they had to do that to even out the field because I made my car so awesome with only $500"

Also, stuff like windshield and brake lights, I'm talking about from a parts donor car. so it doesn't need ANY of that stuff, I'm just looking to maximize legitimate resale dollars.

To be more specific, I'm planning on running a 80s Ford Ranger.  I'd like to buy a late 90s explorer and take its rear axle, leaf springs/mounts, and brake system and sell off the rest of it.  I'd also like to get a 80s/90s F150 and take its front springs and radiator, selling the rest.  So for the explorer and/or F150 the only concern about selling like a whole door (besides no one wanting it) is whether or not that sale price is going to count as deductible or if I'm shooting myself in the foot reducing the weight when I sell it to the masher by the pound.

I know I can't offset cost below zero dollars.  I'm just hoping to get my donor car expenditures down TO zero.

Suspension counts.

Obviously we're not going to be a contender for an overall win as a new team driving a pickup with an inline 4, but we hope to arrive with a well-prepped vehicle and I'm expecting the judges to at least ask what we did when they do a bounce test and it doesn't bounce. 

I expect my parts donors to be practically junk vehicles to begin with so making back what I spend on them shouldn't be too hard, so yeah, overthinking this.  But my point is I'm trying to stick to the letter of the rules and the rules don't spell this part out very well.

The rules say that if it wouldn't count towards the budget if you bought it, then it can't be deducted from the budget if you sell it. This seems to be lost on a lot of people, but at the same time seems to be rarely enforced.

I understood the no negative to mean you’re not getting bonus laps.
So if you buy a car for $800, sell $1,000 of stuff and then put $150 in go fast on it, you don't get to say “I’m at $-50 so I should get 5 BONUS laps”

No amount UNDER $500 matters.

In the end the accounting doesn’t matter as much as just doing your build right. Because you’ll only ever get book checked if your build doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of the rules.

All this drama and dialog.....Just buy a $500 crapcan,cage it and go racing......
You're not gonna win overall your first time out,just go out and have fun....
If the judges take a shine to you,you might get a trophy,and thats even better than an overall win....
Don't try to overthink it,or exploit any loopholes, and just get out there,dammit!

we bought our 84 Trans Am (RIP) for $850, running driving L69 car, probably rare. I sold about $1500 in parts so the value was $0. too bad you can't go into the negative.

For better or worse it would be an empty threat, as judges can't claim cars. That's reserved for the organizers and both Jay and Nick have indicated that they really, really don't want to go to all the trouble involved in doing so. That pretty much just leaves penalty laps as a deterrent, which again circles back to not being able to assert a negative value for the car as a defense against spending too much.

Ultimately this is the correct answer.

I'm looking at this from a perspective closer to what Spank said, throwing free parts at a free car by buying junkers, taking what i want and reselling the rest.  So this could result in a vehicle that looks like a lot has been upgraded but really most of it cost nothing.

I guess the two big ones that seem the most likely to make a difference are the driver seat, and the taillights.  These things are actually likely to sell and bring in some money, depending on year and condition, but seem a little fuzzy in the rules.

I would say that the driver's seat really shouldn't count.  driver comfort/safety.  But passenger seats count so logically a bench seat should count half or you could argue 2/3 if it seats three.

The rules say you need one functioning brake light so I would say that if the car in question has a third brake light, the taillight assemblies are not needed for safety and could be sold on ebay against your $500 budget.  Older cars without a third brake light, maybe only one brake light assembly can count.  Seems open to judge's interpretation for sure.

In the end I doubt it will matter.  If it comes out that close in the final ledger I guess I'll just find out on inspection day.