In reply to JamesMcD :
Well, dang. I haven't been able to find it, sorry. I may have sold it to an in-person customer and forgotten, or it may have left with the scrap metal in one of the cleanups. I wish I did have it for you!!
In reply to JamesMcD :
Well, dang. I haven't been able to find it, sorry. I may have sold it to an in-person customer and forgotten, or it may have left with the scrap metal in one of the cleanups. I wish I did have it for you!!
Oh darn. Thanks for looking though.
Well, this was amusing to read through. Just spent a hour going down a rabbit hole researching MR2 Spyders. Do you have a build thread for your car?
unevolved said:Well, this was amusing to read through. Just spent a hour going down a rabbit hole researching MR2 Spyders. Do you have a build thread for your car?
Dang, I don't. I need to put one together. The car's been great, just what the doctor ordered for a new-ish dad with a self imposed motorcycle ban. My wife has even been commuting in it too and she has been enjoying it.
I made a few more sales; ABS pump, rear subframe, and another of the suspension knuckles gone. I haven't been listing much due to combined laziness and exhaustion from parenting; sleep is such a luxury right now. I hate to delay it when it's possible.
Updated numbers:
Purchase price: $1,500.00
+Towing: $125.78
+eBay fees: $430.50
+Title fees: $58.50
-Parts sales: $5,832.00
=Total profit: $3,717.22
dculberson said:unevolved said:Well, this was amusing to read through. Just spent a hour going down a rabbit hole researching MR2 Spyders. Do you have a build thread for your car?
Dang, I don't. I need to put one together. The car's been great, just what the doctor ordered for a new-ish dad with a self imposed motorcycle ban. My wife has even been commuting in it too and she has been enjoying it.
I made a few more sales; ABS pump, rear subframe, and another of the suspension knuckles gone. I haven't been listing much due to combined laziness and exhaustion from parenting; sleep is such a luxury right now. I hate to delay it when it's possible.
Updated numbers:
Purchase price: $1,500.00
+Towing: $125.78
+eBay fees: $430.50
+Title fees: $58.50
-Parts sales: $5,832.00
=Total profit: $3,717.22
That is seriously impressive. More than double your purchase price!
I am considering selling my mr2.... I have only driven it 3 days this year?
In reply to java230 :
I'll give you $1500 for it!! 
Cool thread!
I just did the same thing with a trashed supercharged Cobalt SS that threw a rod. However, I have shied away from selling stuff on eBay and CL, and have only posted ads on local general enthusiast type "classified" and a plethora of Cobalt/Ion/Ecotec related Facebook pages. Broke even in a matter of days.
It's the second time I've done a part out using mostly Facebook as a means to sell, but the first car was an ultra rare 1994 Capri XR2, so the ads were limited to the one main Capri group. Eventually I put a thread on the Capri forum as well.
Given how the FB stuff works, if I were to post the Cobalt over again, I'd spread the "release" of the listing to different pages one or two a day. Reason being that it seems you get boatloads of interest within the first couple of days, then it quickly thins out. I initially limited my posts to Cobalt only groups. When things slowed down, I posted in a Saturn Ion Redline group and noticed I got a new surge of inquiries from people that were also members of some of the Cobalt groups. My theory is that most group members see or get notified to the post when it comes up on their news feed. Once they've seen or passed it there, they probably won't see it again unless they actually go browse through the actual group, see it come up in a search, or get notified because a friend comments on the post or tags them in it. By posting the part out ad in a different group each day, the members that overlap different groups have a better chance of seeing the post again if they missed it in a different group.
One bonus is that similar to seeing how many people are "watching" an ebay listing, a prospective buyer can sometimes see if others are interested in a part by viewing the comments, which can help bolster your asking price when someone comes along to negotiate. For example, within the first couple hours of posting my ads, a zillion people commented with interest in the front bumper cover. When a local guy messaged me to negotiate a price on it and eventually pick it up, I pointed out the mass interest that he could also see and it helped me stay in a price range I wanted to get for the thing.
The main downside is that it's clunky monitoring/editing/updating each different post. I keep an on the fly updated parts/price list on Notepad on my PC. Every couple of days or so I log onto FB on my PC to update the ads. I go in and search my last name and "Cobalt", set it posts by me and sort the list by most recent, which puts the ads up top. I then edit the main post by dumping the old part list and pasting in the most updated, and then comment on it by listing parts that are now sold and parts that are pending sale and any other related notes (IE inform them I added more pics to my photobucket link since FB only lets you post 30 pics, "anybody want the hood because I'm scrapping it this weekend" LOL). The comment effectively bumps the add back to the top of the group page which is helpful if the group gets tons of new posts and/or new comments on older posts.
The lesser downside (depending on how much patience you have) is wasting time having to deal with all the private messages that come in. I get a ton of people messaging me with: -Lowball offers and then they don't respond if a make a counter, -Requests for info that is clearly stated in my post (IE asking if an item that is marked as sold is available, asking for a price on an item that is on my list and has a price, asking what the price is to ship a certain item that I clearly state in the post I won't ship, asking if a price in my post includes shipping when my post clearly says it's not included), -Asking for a "shipped" price and then getting bent out of shape when it ends up being anything more than $0.50+shipping, -Making plans to meet and pick up an item and they either don't show up or stop responding. -Some hard negotiating that leads to an agreed price, followed by then saying what amounts to "Sounds good. I'm broke right now, but when/if I ever have any money, I will let you know. - A request that I basically do a photoshoot for a certain item or items, which is followed with no response, or the aforementioned "Looks great. If I ever have some money I'd like to buy it"...
I've mostly resorted to quickly responding with counters for lowballers, asking for more detail on what they want in pictures and completely ignoring inquiries that could easily be answered if they simply read my post.
In reply to shelbyz :
Good tips; I lack the right kind of patience for dealing with forum posts, I think. I've sold some stuff on forums but the endless questions from "looky-loos" drives me crazy. Ironically, I find eBay buyers to be much more serious - if I get even one question on an item before it sells, it's unusual. I occasionally get the people with strange requests or begging about the shipping charges but that's pretty rare. The down side of course is the initial listing of each item but I get to decide when that happens which makes my usual 9pm-10pm schedule a little more practical.
Funny(ish) story - I had one guy make me an offer on the rear bumper that was kinda low but I was willing to do it. But he wasn't aware of how much shipping it was going to be - he was expecting free shipping on a $200 sale of the bumper, when it was going to cost me close to $150 to ship it. After eBay and PayPal fees I would have been giving him the bumper for free, essentially. No way! Back and forth a half dozen times over a few days we hammered out a deal on price and Greyhound shipping to his local Greyhound station in Texas. I modified the ad to reflect all those terms (Greyhound to-the-terminal shipping, price, etc.) and then told the guy it was ready. He says, "OK give me a couple days to get the money together." Cue eye roll but then a third party swoops in and buys it and pays right away. Guy was in TN so the shipping was even cheaper for me. I felt kinda bad for the other guy, but if you're going to go through all that, be ready to pull the trigger, dummy.
In other news, I sold the brake booster which pushes me to $5892 in parts sales. I'm so close to $6000, I can taste it. It doesn't mean anything of course but I think it would be cool to have sold 4x the purchase price in parts. (Plus keeping all my goodies I needed for my car!)
I finally posted the first door, I had stripped it to pretty much just the shell since the hardware was selling separately pretty well. Broken into components the doors are worth way more than as an assembly. I'll probably end up close to $600 out of all the pieces and the door shell versus a couple hundred less for it all put together.
Another couple sales - brake booster and HVAC controls are gone now. I've finally listed all the rest of the body parts and a bunch more bit and pieces. They'll probably take a few months to sell but should make my total quite nice.
New totals:
Purchase price: $1,500.00
+Towing: $125.78
+eBay fees: $436.50
+Title fees: $58.50
-Parts sales: $5,967.00
=Total profit: $3,846.22
I'm so close to $6000 in sales I can taste it. Which I just realized I said in my last post. Well, now the taste is quite distinct.
Sold a couple more parts: the dash bar / crash structure, and the passenger side window regulator. New total: $6,167 in sales! Woo hoo!
New totals:
Purchase price: $1,500.00
+Towing: $125.78
+eBay fees: $456.50
+Title fees: $58.50
-Parts sales: $6,167.00
=Total profit: $4,026.22
I've still got a bunch of listings up and a few small things to list. I'm hoping to list the last of the parts today or tomorrow. If I sell everything at the prices I'm asking, that'll be another $2,000 in sales. Kind of sobering to realize. I'm fully prepared to take half that if I have to, and will still be very, very pleased with the result even if the stuff ends up going cheaper.
There's a possibility I'll be buying my next part-out candidate tomorrow. We'll see how that goes, it's my first IAAI purchase and they have a lot of manual approvals and hoops to jump through before you can actually bid. Hopefully that's taken care of before tomorrow morning's auction. I don't know if I'll post a thread about that one, this has been fun but is it worth posting yet another thread about it? Would anyone read it?
In reply to dculberson :
yes, we'd eat it up and enjoy it! I know I would, anyway!
Good luck with IAA. My method is to pre-bid (at the last minute) to the highest price I would be comfortable with. Like ebay, the auction website will only take your bidding price as high as it needs to. I had a $1,300 max bid on the Mercury and won it for just $700.
Pre-Bidding ends 1 hour before the auction starts. I have noticed that locally the website via computer/tablet sometimes closes bidding earlier. I also have the App downloaded to my phone. When the computer version closes early, the app still accepts bids up to the proper end time. So there is a big tip...download the app.
Fees, fees, fees. Know your fees.
Lastly, I highly recommend to see the cars in person. Maybe not as important to you since you'll be parting but very important to me since I'll be rebuilding.
Also, IAA's 1-800 number was very helpful the one time I needed to call them about account set up.
If I still had the space (my friends backyard) I would definitely still be parting out cars. It was fun learning while taking stuff apart too. We would always have a few cars in the rotation, and once we made enough back on one we would junk the car. The key for us was to stick to a number when to get rid of the car and replace it with a new parts car. Usually that would keep sales active enough where we wouldn't get lazy and sit on a dead car that wasn't moving any parts.
On a completely separate topic, do you happen to still have the power steering pump available? I could use it on a swap I'm working on...
I do not have the power steering pump; I sold that. Yeah I had to get my lift freed up so it was easy for me to get rid of the shell fast. But I’m pretty thorough when pulling parts so it is hard for me to leave good parts on the car when I scrap it... that leads to a lot of “extras” piling up. I need to get better about either selling or scrapping the extras.
Thanks for checking on the pump...
When we first started we also stripped to the frame and even bought a plasma cutter to chop the frame down. We then faced the same problem you did when trying to scrap...need a VIN and paperwork otherwise the junkyard would not accept it, so we just kept everything on the car until needed. Turned out the best storage system for us that kept everything organized was to just keep it on the car! Wasn't organized enough to label so I can't remember how many times I tried to figure out what part went to what car after a while...
Well, my IAAI account didn't get enabled in time to bid on the auction today. That's OK - the car went for a little more than I wanted to pay, but not more than I was willing to pay, so it would have been top $$ for my first iaai purchase. I'll try again next week when my account will hopefully be functional. I'm going for a higher end car, with a higher buy-in but a higher pay-out, since my time is more limited than my capital at this point.
Congrats on the $6k milestone!
I'll be looking forward to your next part out thread, tbh. What's your next car in mind?
In reply to FuzzWuzzy :
The car I tried to bid on was a 2010 Mercedes c300. Nothing exciting but they look to part out well. I think they’re in that sweet spot where they’re old enough to need repairs but new enough to be worth repairing. Also old enough that more DIY oriented people own them.
IAAI account is finally active but having an extra week to think about it means I'm going to wait a few more weeks to get the shop cleaned up more. I need to have this next part-out go faster and be neater as I want to keep my shop functional even once there's a torn apart car in it. There's an MR2 Spyder in VA that was very, very tempting but I realized it's a sale not open to the public. I'd love to get a dismantler's license, they're not that expensive, but you have to have a fenced in acre+ lot, zoning approved for storage. I have the acreage but it's in a very nice neighborhood so no way to get that approved! I don't want to store anything outside but I didn't see any provisions in the licensing for an extremely low volume, indoor-only dismantler like me. What I'm doing qualifies only as a hobby really and licensing would be overkill anyway.
I made a few more MR2 parts sales: Driver's side window and rear bumper beam.
New totals:
Purchase price: $1,500.00
+Towing: $125.78
+eBay fees: $467.50
+Title fees: $58.50
-Parts sales: $6,277.00
=Total profit: $4,125.22
Sold a few more MR2 parts; getting pretty close to finishing this up. I sold the driver's door, passenger side window glass, and engine wiring harness. I'm excited to be so close to $7000 in sales from it!
New totals:
Purchase price: $1,500.00
+Towing: $125.78
+eBay fees: $482.70
+Title fees: $58.50
-Parts sales: $6,818.00
=Total profit: $4,651.02
This is freaking amazing. I was happy to have sold about $750 in parts off a $250 challenge car. You're doing GREAT!
If I had more time I'd strongly consider doing this with Jaguar XJRs... there are two on my CL right now for sub 2k.
Yeah, I'm more than a little surprised. The time frame stretched out longer than intended, but the money coming in as exceeded expectations a few times over.
This is one of my favorite threads on the forum, I'd definitely follow along on another similar adventure!
Just sold the other door .. $180, and the guy's heard of this thread. :-) Looks like my new total is ... $6998. Do I get to round that up and call it $7000??
@simplecat: I am surprised and happy to hear you call this your favorite thread. Thank you! While I like doing it, I can't imagine reading about it being more interesting than the cool builds and stuff on here.
The prices you are commanding for some of these parts are higher than a full service junkyard, nevermind a self serve one. You apparently found a relatively rare car with a hell of a market in your local area. Impressive.
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