[Marc P.]

I'll second John's comments about the great discussion in this thread. All the talk is steadily persuading me that the prebuilt transmissions may be a good thing for the competition. Especially the avaliability to teams without the resources to craft their own, as it does help to level the playing field by providing enhanced drive functionality.

I do have a few more questions to throw out there though. While it looks like this type of company would fit within the guidlines of the written rules, wouldn't it require a clear seperation between the company personell and a certain team? As a seperate corporate/company entity, the transmissions can be manufactured any time during the year. If there is a team association, the company may be viewed as part of the team, and thus manufacturing would be restricted to the 6 week build period. Especially if said team uses one of the company's transmissions (which of course, I'd expect them to account for the full price in the BOM anyway). But it's really more of a company vs. team conflict of interest issue in terms of the official rules. FIRST has volunteers sign conflict of interest papers for positions which can directly affect competition, so I'd hope the same would be true of any parts provider.

The other question is in terms of a guarantee/warranty, and liability. With Innovation First, they have reps at every official event, such that in case of any problems or equipment failures, technical advice and spare parts are provided as the need arises. With these transmissions, would they be sold "as is", in that any problems encountered are the responsibility of the teams themselves, or would they come with a warranty in the unlikely event something fails, breaks, bends, shatters/otherwise falls apart. If something does fail in a big shoving match, would the company be held liable for the loss?