Can we talk about karting?

[D_Eclipse9916]

WTF is this MM garage shit? Get your ass out in the parking lot and wrench. How often does this even get used?

To be fair, I don't think this generation would even work on a car (nevertheless park their car) outside

Just kidding. I think it is awesome IF they can afford it. I definitely would have appreciated it while in school, but I can see it easily being abused (one member just keeping his car in there 9 months out of the year).

These aren't the days of me doing a turbo swap in Rockingham Parking Lot in February during a snowstorm and the campus police coming by to say my car might be susceptible to getting something stolen out of it while on jack stands. Shit, I wouldn't even do that now.

[JustinG]

I just wanna know whats the cost, how much it is being used, and for what kind of work?

[Goodspeed]

I just wanna know whats the cost, how much it is being used, and for what kind of work?

I'm just BS'ing here as my memory is fading, but I had a garage at North 38 my senior year. I think it was 700/yr.

[Sully]

I think a thread should be made about that autocross thing at Shenandoah speedway because there's a lot more to it. It just doesn't make sense for the club to tackle it on its own since it needs to pretty much borrow/rent an entire autocross setup anyway.

The garage is Dan's old garage in North 38. I'm not sure about the cost but i think $60 a month unless that's when dan was splitting it with the club.

I've also been concerned with abuse of the garage. As long as it's being used how it's supposed to and not storing one of the north 38 guys extra cars, i think it's a good thing. I remember a while back, the officers "shut it down" for a little while cause north 38 complained about too much activity. If that happens again or becomes more of a problem, I don't think it'd be worth keeping.

[G.Irish]

The last couple of karting enduros have only had 20 people so if 10 slots are taken by students and get the $10 discount, it only costs the club $100. Even if the subsidy is $20, $200 is not ridiculous. I don't think that is a crazy price to pay for the karting event, or any other event where people get to drive in anger. Even if $500 is left over after paying for shirts and the garage, spending an additional $100-200 for karting seems to be well worth it.

If $200 is putting a hurt on the club, why not raise some funds? It's been said many times in the past but there are plenty of alumni and parents that would be willing to donate money if someone would put some effort into fundraising.

Step 1: Get list of emails or mailing addresses of MM alumni and parents of current students
Step 2: Work out some gifts for donation tiers. For example:

$5 = sticker
$10 = sticker pack (you can get some sweet full color sticker sheets made on sites like stickermule.com)
$25 = t-shirt or coffee mug
$50 = hat, hoodie, etc.

Step 3: Send out newsletter with gift breakdown and IRS Non-Profit ID number so people can deduct it from taxes

If you put a little effort and polish into it you could easily raise $200 and more.

[rherold9]

Garage is $60 a month. I'm voting to keep it. Yes a car stays in there and the car is only in there when people are not using it. It isn't just to store the car. It isn't being abused in my opinion. And people do get a lot of use out of it when it is needed and their a shit ton of tools we have stored in there.

[JustinG]

Who ever is storing there car in there, should pay a portion, and offer MM use when needed. IMO

[SlimKlim]

BACK IN MY DAY WE WORKED ON OUR CARS ON WINDY 20* DAYS IN FEBRUARY IN CABELL'S PARKING LOT. THEN WE DROVE RWD CARS UPHILL IN THE SNOW BOTH WAYS TO GET OUR Ds WET. ON SUMMER TIRES. AND WE LIKED IT.

[Maengelito]

Can you feel it brewing? Its at a nice simmer right now...

[rherold9]

There has been several months he has paid the garage out on full with no money from MM. I think he is fine imo. The garage is useful. People have done suspension work, brakes, replacing half shafts, changing oil, etc... Not everyone has the tools to work on the cars outside where the MM garage has almost everything

[SlimKlim]

Maybe I just have a terminal case of not giving a fuck, but I'm not really sure I understand why this thread is happening.

Seems to me like a shitstorm got kicked up over a half-thought-out idea, and from the sounds of it the current students are doing just fine.

[JustinG]

Yall's money, do what ya want. Just trying to weigh the options. If you get 10 hours worth of work in the garage, but that person stores their car in there for the remaining 90% of the month, seems silly for MM to pay to store a car.

And I think the thread got kicked up cause we aren't doing karting due to no money, when it seems there is, and it is literally the only event most alumni get to interact with new students.

[rherold9]

To go off of Joey's statement I couldnt agree more. All honesty I think we are doing the best we have since I've been apart of MM. This club is run for students and we are thinking of what students want and what will keep them around even if there are higher costs of certain things over others. We as officers are appealing to what we believe students want. I'm sure we will get a huge turnout of having a tailgate and I'm sure people will enjoy that a lot as just one example. I'm sure a lot of you when you were students would enjoy a damn tailgate to hang out with everyone.

We have been going through several things we can do to make the club better.

[rherold9]

Yall's money, do what ya want. Just trying to weigh the options. If you get 10 hours worth of work in the garage, but that person stores their car in there for the remaining 90% of the month, seems silly for MM to pay to store a car.

And I think the thread got kicked up cause we aren't doing karting due to no money, when it seems there is, and it is literally the only event most alumni get to interact with new students.

I'm sorry I don't believe at karting alumni really interact with students too much. It is more of a competition where alumni get on their team and students get on theirs and you alumni fight to be the best. Tell me where interaction is there? I think interaction starts at social events where alumni and students can actually talk a lot. Tailgates, grill outs, etc... Where alumni can make it but not many do. There are only a handful of alumni who can and actually make it to things in Harrisonburg where us students are but yet you complain.

[Riice Cooker]

We currently have ~$1300 dollars in the account right now. I have a another $250 I have to deposit and still waiting on dues from three or four more people. That will put us at around $1850. The garage is $720 dollars for the year and the shirts will be around 300 leaving us with $850 to do with as we please. I'm currently making an excel sheet with projected expenses and all that stuff. But yea thats how we sit financially right now

[JustinG]

To go off of Joey's statement I couldnt agree more. All honesty I think we are doing the best we have since I've been apart of MM. This club is run for students and we are thinking of what students want and what will keep them around even if there are higher costs of certain things over others. We as officers are appealing to what we believe students want. I'm sure we will get a huge turnout of having a tailgate and I'm sure people will enjoy that a lot as just one example. I'm sure a lot of you when you were students would enjoy a damn tailgate to hang out with everyone.

We have been going through several things we can do to make the club better.

And that is fine, i'll go sit on my front porch, sip sweet tea, and yell at kids to get off my lawn.

But if you want Alumni money, advice, involvement, then we need to have events that involve us and interest us. I am not speaking for everyone but I need something more than Kline's ice cream and a cruise up 33 to make the trek up to H-burg, hence why Karting, Turducken, the Car Show, and track events are the only heavily Alumni involved events.

[SlimKlim]

I think everyone needs to smoke the peace pipe in this thread, it feels pretty salty in here and we aren't really arguing over anything in particular.

Fair point Justin. I guess I just never liked karting at G-force that much so it does slant my opinion. Personally I would be more inclined to go do a karting event at SPK than G-force. I prefer driving that direction and the outdoor course is a hell of a lot more fun.

Ryan, historically we had a big party the night before karting and/or we went and had a cookout at Justin's house afterwards, so there was a lot of mingling and tire kicking going on.

I think whatever y'all decide to do will work out just fine. And frankly, if it doesn't, it has no effect on the daily lives of us alumni, except we don't get to make as many impressionable new car friends, we'll just have to bicker amongst ourselves instead.

I don't know if I can make the college solo, but I'm hoping we find a good weekend for Turducken this year where lots of current students can make it.

[Sully]

I applaud Ryan and Taylor for being the ones who have to handle this thread as I remember when I had to do it during my year.

That said, we had social events and cookouts and top gear viewing nights and none of them really cost the club that much and if it did, we managed to still make it work and Jake and them made it work with less money. Dues used to be half what they are now.

I really just enjoy bitching and voicing my opinion. If it's wrong, I just voice it louder to drown out the rest.

But while we are on the bitching and complaining about money. Since you're not going karting, can you use some of that money to go back to vbd or go to a different sticker supplier. Last I heard, it was Sam's friend who was doing it and I'll be completely blunt, Those stickers look like complete ass. From 10 feet out, they look like two rectangular blocks opposed to M's. Even up close, it's hard to tell they are M's.

Today has been a good day for the rustling of the jimmies

[nismosam]

As for the garage being shut down last year due to the level of activity it had, that management has since been fired and replaced. The new management hasn't given us any issues.

As for storing the car in there, it's my car that's occasionally in there. Do I mind paying for some of it? No, I don't mind. However, before I had just saw it as, that's the benefit I get, for having it in my name, paying out of pocket for consumables in there that frequently get used(PB blaster, shop towels, hand cleaner, etc..) , always meeting up with members who need the opener to get in to borrow tools, or to use the garage (which if my car happens to be in, I take it out and leave it out til everyone is done using it, even if it's a week or a few days.) Plus I meet with kids pretty much at all times to let them in, like last night 2 different members needed stuff out of the MM garage near midnight. Not to mention my tools I leave in there to be used (and occasionally broken, or to have a wrench set returned missing one, etc..)

As for keeping it or not, I personally don't care. It was voted on last year, and people wanted to keep it, we can get rid of it for next year if that's what the current students decide they want to do.

Also, for we were never talking about NOT karting at all. We were talking about figuring out another way to go karting without us having to rent out Gforce like previous years (2 weeks ago it didn't look like we'd have enough money to do Gforce, IIRC we got about $800 from the first meeting), and trying to use that money for other events. However we keep getting dues in from more people what seems like everyday, so we actually should have enough in the account to do Gforce anyway.

Touching on the possibility of doing a Shenandoah Speedway event, it would have to be really informal. I.E. we wouldn't be allowed to have a full auto-x setup ( basically no auto-x timers). It would have to be called a test & tune (with a max of I believe 40 cars), and they will rent it out to us for as little as $500 on an off day, and as much as $1k for an all day saturday event. If we wanted to have an actual auto-x there, they charge $3k for that because it's an actual event, not a test & tune.

[Maengelito]

I'm sorry I don't believe at karting alumni really interact with students too much. It is more of a competition where alumni get on their team and students get on theirs and you alumni fight to be the best. Tell me where interaction is there? I think interaction starts at social events where alumni and students can actually talk a lot. Tailgates, grill outs, etc... Where alumni can make it but not many do. There are only a handful of alumni who can and actually make it to things in Harrisonburg where us students are but yet you complain.

In previous years, I think I've met a majority of the students (at the time) from karting and at the track.