types - passing as parameter in function

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I'm having trouble working out how to pass a type instance as a paramter to a function. Prior to doing this, this is what I achieve right now

; I call the function like this
start_gearchange_timer()

; this is what the function looks like
Function start_gearchange_timer()
player(1)\gearchange_timer = Millisecs()
End Function

...now I have lots of timers, so I don't want to have lots of functins that essentially do the same thing so I wanted a simple function that could be passed paramters to do the same job eg.

;call the NEW function like this
start_timer( paramters eg. player(1)\gearchange_timer )

; the NEW function would look like this
Function start_timer ( paramters )
paramaters = Millisecs()
End Function

Can anyone help ? Hope I explained that ok. Basically I want to know have to pass a custom type variable and its field as a paramter in a function!