Ever wonder what happens to cars you "scrap"

I wonder what people would think if I told them that I've bought four cars from customers who were going to junk them. In all cases, I paid junkyard value plus covered their diagnostic bill. Then proceeded to repair them and drive 'em or give them to family. (Except for the Isuzu. That car was nothing but a money pit and I was glad to see it go where it belonged)

We have kind of a joke at work. If you want a car, plan to make an offer on it. This almost guarantees that they will fix it. One time, a customer was hemming and hawing on if the car was worth repairs, guy I work with mentioned that it was decent enough that he would buy it to repair, and just like that "Okay fix it!" Creepy how it turns out like that.

FranktheTank wrote: My brother sold a truck to a scrap yard and still calls me mad everytime he sees it on the road. He said next one is going to be set on fire first.

Your brother needs a lesson in perspective.

I sold a car for $50 and was psyched every time I saw it on the road.

dculberson wrote:

FranktheTank wrote: My brother sold a truck to a scrap yard and still calls me mad everytime he sees it on the road. He said next one is going to be set on fire first.

Your brother needs a lesson in perspective. I sold a car for $50 and was psyched every time I saw it on the road.

I am usually thrilled to see one of my first sho's I bought still on the road. Granted, that was definitely a bit different than the ones I've hauled off to the scrapyard.

Ronholm, you weren't the guy that I pissed off several years ago by scrapping those turbo mopars was it?

If someone wants to resell a car rather than crushing it, good for them. It annoys me way more that people send cars to the crusher because they are too lazy or think they are too good to deal with anyone who would want to buy it than someone reselling a car someone didn't want anymore.

I drove a 93 dodge spirit with the 2.5tbi and 3 speed auto to a junkyard, filled with as much scrap steel as I could fit inside, got $150. I thought I did awesome, told the guy I thought there was a valve sticking in the head, and the trans was on its way out. About the only good parts left were the new gas tank and pump.

A week later, I saw 3 guys pushing my car off the road back in town. I know the JY cleaned it out and sold it for $500, felt a little bad for the buyer but felt happy I hadn't mis-judged and sent a car to its grave early.

I also visit strict yards that will not let a vehicle leave once it is in the yard, and although I could get caught up on not being able to save cool cars, I can still get the cool parts off for cheap!

In reply to dculberson:

I think he's more mad he didn't fix it when I told him to. Not so much at the guy that bought or sold it. Was my old truck so usually I'm mad that he scrapped it and wld like to have been able to buy it back. Oh well.

As far as classics go we have taken stripped parts cars and they would drag them to the side and strip them to a frame and sell every piece. The local scrap tycoon is penny minded.

The pancaked newyorker turbo on top of the '91 shebly z turbo was hilarious to see their reaction though.

If you sold a complete-ish shelby daytona for scrap price, the joke's on you. I also bought a turbo new yorker out of a junkyard and i suppose im reasonably happy the guy who sold it INTO the junkyard didnt feel the need to destroy it beforehand.

I think in general i would like it to be as EASY AS POSSIBLE for recyclers to sell whole cars. As it is there have been lots of cars i would have bought out of junkyards on the spot except that it's legally impossible here. It has to be something that they recognize a market for BEFORE they put it in the yard and run the paperwork for it as a destroyed vehicle.

In Texas, apparently at some point the law was changed so that if you (you means joe blow not in the know) want to sell a car to a junkyard, the title has to be in YOUR name. I used to be able to sell cars to junkyards as long as i had a signed title even if i had no connection to the person whose name was on the title. Im pretty annoyed about the change because it makes it more difficult for me to sell to junkyards and seems to funnel that business/profit into the hands of the metal recyclers and the 'scrap guys' that pick up anything recyclable and sell it to metal recycling yards on an honor code basis between buyer/seller regardless of what's legal. At least if i sell something into a junkyard there is a good chance someone who needs something off that car will get the parts before the car gets turned into a cube. There are some cars im ok selling to junkyards but unhappy to sell straight to a metal recycler.

Most states require a title for a junkyard car. Rather... they require a title if the junkyard crushes the car and wants credit. The upside for the junkyard is that every once in a while they get a complete car that has actual value and they can sell the whole thing for more than they paid for it.

They're in the business of buying a car for parts. They want a car that will make them profit - either by the parts being worth more than the whole (after paying labor to dismantle said parts) or by cutting their losses and selling the whole thing.

That Stude in the OP could have brought $4000 in parts.... after a year of sitting on their lot and after paying labor every time a customer wanted a fender, a steering box, a wheel, or a hood. They know what they are doing. If they can find a sucker at $2000 they can get cash now for a complete car instead of deferring little bits of gross/net over the next few years.

If you think about it, a niche car like that is worth more to them as a complete vehicle. How many people own that car and how many of them will need parts from it over the next decade? The yard is looking at the fact that its a nearly complete car and can bring $2k now instead of being a dead asset on the lot taking up space.

That is why there is a huge difference between a salvage yard and a pick-a-part.

Strip it and send them as little as possible. Part that sucker out!

curtis73 wrote: That Stude in the OP could have brought $4000 in parts.... after a year of sitting on their lot

A year?

The yards I used to frequent had a 2 week turnover. 2 weeks on the lot, then anything remaining of reasonable value was removed and the rest was shredded. That's for the maybe 25-35% of the cars that didn't go straight to the shredder because they were too far gone to pull parts from or too old. (Too old ranged from 5 to 15years) Too old means low chance of the car making money and justifying its space on the lot.

novaderrik wrote: i know this might sound weird, but scrapyards are operated by people... and sometimes those people buy cars and sell them... and sometimes those people in the junkyards decide that a car that someone brings in for scrap is too nice/unique/rare/cool to wind up in the crusher so they sell them as is- which is legal, since they hold the title and a lot of the time they are licensed car dealers.. i know of a rather large junkyard (one of the biggest in the country) that buys cars just like the one in the OP from all over the country to sell for a profit. i got my Nova from them back in '99- they bought it out in Cali with the front end caved in and 2 head shaped spider webs in the windshield after it hit a light pole, showed me a polaroid of it when they loaded it in the flat bed to haul to MN.. they got it drivable with a front clip and subframe from a 69 Nova from Texas and i traded them a 78 Trans Am with a blown head gasket and $1200 for it...

and I've read of scrap yds that REFUSE to sell whole cars ...

In reply to Vigo:

Indiana never used to require a title, that changed in the last year or two here. And I know before that, you could never buy a whole car from a scrapyard. Note the difference, this is a scrapyard, not a junkyard. Nothing gets parted out from this place.

I know the shelby is worth a crapload more now, but at the time, I took it for what the car was. A dodge daytona. I went with sho's as being more in my tastes at that point. I haven't really regretted that choice either.

I gotcha. Some shelby daytonas are an easy $1k in parts, but there are some that are closer to $2-400 (on top of the scrap weight of what's left), and at the lower end its sometimes not worth the hassle of parting/selling.

I know some states dont require a title on a vehicle over 25 years, and i WISH that was true in Texas. Our title laws are truly cumbersome on vehicles that are only worth a few hundred dollars and make it more likely that a lot of them will end up being crushed into cubes. Likewise, seems like if there were no titles required on old cars it would be a lot easier for me to get them road-legal, and to buy them from junkyards when a good one comes through. I've parted out a 1-of-36 car in a junkyard before. That sucks.

Ronholm, you weren't the guy that I pissed off several years ago by scrapping those turbo mopars was it?

Wasn't me... I haul several to the crusher every year...

Of course after stripping them clean...

Heck... Just take a gander at my avatar... "targa" top daytona baby!

yamaha wrote: Well, thanks to requiring titles to "scrap" a car these days, you happen across these gems of douchebaggery......and to think, this exact scrapyard wonders why everything I take them has the roof caved in http://muncie.craigslist.org/cto/3712572333.html I have odds that they gave the guy a whopping $145 for that.....

You should open your own non profit scrapyard.

wbjones wrote:

novaderrik wrote: i know this might sound weird, but scrapyards are operated by people... and sometimes those people buy cars and sell them... and sometimes those people in the junkyards decide that a car that someone brings in for scrap is too nice/unique/rare/cool to wind up in the crusher so they sell them as is- which is legal, since they hold the title and a lot of the time they are licensed car dealers.. i know of a rather large junkyard (one of the biggest in the country) that buys cars just like the one in the OP from all over the country to sell for a profit. i got my Nova from them back in '99- they bought it out in Cali with the front end caved in and 2 head shaped spider webs in the windshield after it hit a light pole, showed me a polaroid of it when they loaded it in the flat bed to haul to MN.. they got it drivable with a front clip and subframe from a 69 Nova from Texas and i traded them a 78 Trans Am with a blown head gasket and $1200 for it...

and I've read of scrap yds that REFUSE to sell whole cars ...

some yards specialize in scrap- they buy it from individuals and haul it in to bigger places that shred them and ship them to wherever they get made into new cars..

some yards specialize in cars and car parts- these are the ones that will most likely have whole cars for sale.. the junkyard i mentioned before has cars that have been sitting there for 50+ years getting slowly picked over.. it is an amazing place to just walk around..

In reply to ronholm:

This one wasn't a targa, but had the same wheels, nose cowl, popup headlights, etc.......blue over silver. To be honest, it only needed the turbo replaced. If I had known about the challenge back then, it would have been listed here.

Vigo wrote: . I've parted out a 1-of-36 car in a junkyard before. That sucks.

Before digital cameras I ran across a grand-caravan with the 2.5 turbo, 3 speed auto, had the standard exhaust. No other real options, no rear HVAC. No one believes me.

I ran a spirit R/T tach in my 2.5 tbi spirit for years, wishing it would rev over 5k.

I try not to hoard parts, but when you see that stuff, and you know its going to get crushed...

daytonaer wrote:

Vigo wrote: . I've parted out a 1-of-36 car in a junkyard before. That sucks.

Before digital cameras I ran across a grand-caravan with the 2.5 turbo, 3 speed auto, had the standard exhaust. No other real options, no rear HVAC. No one believes me. I ran a spirit R/T tach in my 2.5 tbi spirit for years, wishing it would rev over 5k. I try not to hoard parts, but when you see that stuff, and you know its going to get crushed...

about 20 years ago, my favorite junkyard had a whole line up of of about a dozen XR4Ti's and Turbo Coupes and a couple of SVO Mustangs lined up about 50 feet from about 20 Chevy Laguna S3's... all of those cars were mostly complete and all disappeared at about the same after sitting there for a couple of years... every one of them was hauled in for scrap by someone, and i have a feeling that at least a few of them are on the road somewhere right now..

Before digital cameras I ran across a grand-caravan with the 2.5 turbo, 3 speed auto, had the standard exhaust. No other real options, no rear HVAC. No one believes me. I ran a spirit R/T tach in my 2.5 tbi spirit for years, wishing it would rev over 5k.

I have SEEN with me own eyes, a legit factory turbo grand caravan. Owned by Chuck Green in Ohio at that time (2009). He has 2 much nicer short wheelbase turbo vans to this day.

As for the spirit tach, didnt the r/t SPEEDO go up to 145? I think that was a 92-only thing which is why it's super rare. I pegged my 8v spirit past 120 at lower than stock boost. I guess it would be nice to have a 145 speedo but i wont pay for one!

And yeah, when my Aries was a modded tbi, 5200 was about as high as i would shift! The short gears made it seem faster than it was. 25, 45, 65mph shifts at WOT!

There used to be a white turbo caravan with white wheels in the closest town to me.