[beekeeper]

Hello,

New here but not new to loving cool cars. I've had the bug to build a car for quite a long time. I've homed in on an RCR Gt40 as my next obsession. I'm excited about the thought of taking on a project like this and hope to get started in a year or so.

Right now I'm doing research on the legal aspects of getting the SB100. As far as I understand this, there are 500 permits issued per year. In order to apply, you have to have purchased a kit. Assuming that these permits are issued as fast I think they do, that leaves a really narrow opportunity to register a car. If you are not one of the fortunate 500 then you have to try annually until you succeed.

It have no doubt this has been discussed in detail but it seems to me that this is a really big leap of faith financially. The thought of plunking down $50K for a kit, build it and keep applying until it happens puts a big red flag on doing this.

Knowing that a project of this magnuitude will take me a couple of years, I'll have a couple of chances before I'm finished with the build. Once that happens and I don't get the SB100 permit what's next? Store the car until I can register it? Get 60 day TOPs until I get the SB100?

Has this happend to any of you or am I worrying about it too much?

A second question I have is about the definition of the way the car is registerd. You have a choice of registering it against the engine block casting year or the rear that the kit car represents. If you go with the year of the car then that means you are allowed to build an engine from new parts ie: block without worrying about it passing the BAR smog test?

The reason I'm asking is because I spoke to a guy at a local car show about 5 years ago. He had just completed a beautiful FFR Cobra build and was telling me that he had to build a replacement engine from an old block because the Crate motor he had originally installed was too new and the BAR had failed him due to emmissions standards of the new engine. He had a replacement engine made from a pre'72 block and was then allowed to register it.

If that was true then I don't see anywhere in the SB100 description he went wrong. My guess was that he tried to register the car after teh 500 permits were handed out and they made him comform to the build year which would be 2004 not 1965. It still doesn't make sense because he would still have to make it emmissions legal for 2004 unless he evntually got a SB100 and smogged it against the block date code.

I've got tons of research to do to get this stuff clear before I commit but I would appreciate anyones comments. I live in Santa Barbara California and would love to get together with anyone who's in the area.

If anyone would like to chat offline, please PM me.

thanks,

Jeff Honeyman