In Project 2013, can I Split a Task with another Task?

Question

If I have a task that after being initiated is delayed from further progress, I'd like to be able to create a new task for the delay, and then link the start of the delay task to the end of the first split and link the end of the delay to the front of the
second split.
Is this possible, or do I need to break the original task into two separate lines after a delay occurs (technically, I would likely also have to create a summary task to encompass both the task work and the delay work).
BTW, I want to create the delay as a separate task because I want to be able to track the different types of delays that happen.
For Example, If I had a task to test a part, but the test equipment breaks during the testing, I would like to track the time it takes to repair the equipment and have that time push out the expected completion of the testing.  If on another testing
activity, a software glitch occurs, I want to track that delay as well.  At the end of the day, I'd like to pull a report of the types of delays, the time they took, and how they pushed back the completion of the testing activities.  I'd rather not
have to be creating a lot of extra lines in the project file whenever a delay occurs.
Thanks!
Thanks,

Answer 1

Running Man,
As an adjunct to Julie's suggestions, in order to get what you want you are going to have to add extra tasks to represent each delay activity, (e.g. equipment delay, software delay, critical part delay, etc.), unless you want to live dangerously (more on
that later).
I'll offer another idea for reporting. You mention that at the end of the day you would like to see a summary of all delay activities. Here's a thought. Use a text field or even a number field and enter a word/code for each type of delay. You can then filter
or group on those words/codes to see those specific delay tasks. If you use grouping, Project will create a group summary line that will sum up delay hours for you.
Now about living dangerously. If you don't want to add tasks to your main file each time a delay occurs, you could track those separately in another file. The least dangerous way is to manually enter the delay tasks in the separate file and adjust the split
re-start in the main file as Julie suggests. The more dangerous approach is to use external links between the two files. You may or may not need a separate linking milestone to use as the link point, depending on how it is set up. Why is this approach dangerous?
Because any linked structure in Project is prone to corruption.
John