For most most wrenching jobs, any required parts will be found new at the local O’Reilly’s Zone or Auto NAPA or whatever. Or, if you’re planning ahead (wild concept), you just tippy-tap whatever you need into your phone and presto, a few days later a guy or gal drops it at your door like you’re Wile E. Coyote receiving a fresh set of rocket skates and a huge magnet.
And then there are the other jobs. The ones where cost and/or availability make buying new parts a no-go, and sourcing what you need from the universe of used parts is the best or perhaps only way to get your ride back on the road. Maybe you get lucky and find what you need pre-plucked and ready for you to pick up off of Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, but odds are you’re going to have to harvest the required parts from a heap at your favorite pick-and-pull yard. So let’s talk pickin’ and pullin’!
Our man Stephen Walter Gossin is an absolute beast at a salvage yard, and can be found heap-hunting nearly every weekend. I asked him for a few tips to get us rolling–here’s Stevie G!
– Leave your jacks and any other car-moving gear at home too. No one wants a car to fall on a customer!
I add features to my car from the yards.
No garage door opener? off to the yard and add the feature.
No power seats? just snatch a set and transfer the cushions and covers form your current one.
Also, why do all the cars smell like wet dogs that smoke in junkyards?
If it is still there the first thing to do in a new wreck is to pull up the seats, or if nothing else do some exploratory checking under the front seats(careful of animals and wear gloves in case of needles), also check all the cubbies for treasures.
My main strategy is to save every flat screen TV box. That well inked cardboard makes shimmying that much easier. And good bed liners too.
After many years of scavenging parts at the local u-pull-its, I would offer the following advice to a newbie:
I follow my local pick and pull on Facebook. They post interior and exterior photos of each car organized by row as they put them out in the yard. Each row is something like GM Trucks or Ford cars. They also have text alerts that you can set up for specific vehicle models if you are looking for something specific. Not only is it handy, but it’s really interesting to me to look at some of the stuff virtually. Shout-out to US Auto Sterling Heights and their excellent use of social media.
I can’t claim much in the way of strategy. I always walk the new arrivals section if the yard has one, and I always walk the entire section which has the types of vehicles I’m looking for parts on. I will always choose a pull your part yard over one where a technician pulls one for you, although I’ve found that once you get to know some of the latter types they’ll let you pull your parts anyhow. I’ve yet to reestablish those relationships since moving back here last year but I’m going to have to with a new project starting.
Strategy? I’ve found that it’s usually a lot less expensive to get parts from salvage yards late at night.
Essential tools? Beyond regular tools? Dark clothing, bolt cutters and a can of aerosol duster to keep any pesky Pinscher’s at bay and from baying.
No, that’s terrible, just kidding.
I don’t have much to add here beyond what y’all have already said. But I did pick up a weird junk yard quirk years ago that I can’t escape.
I pay way too much attention when I am (god forbid) a passenger in a friends car, and so will take a mental note of the make and model should I notice anything broken or that they need interior-wise.
Then I can’t help but think about it when I go to a salvage yard, so I always look for that part they need but are too busy or lazy to deal with.
Just cheap stuff mainly. That crap that people forget is a problem because they have become so used to overlooking or dealing it.
I once gave my sister a plastic sun visor retainer clip for her Focus as a Christmas present. Wrapped up all pretty in a little box. She was very confused until I installed it (replacing the broken one).
I think it cost me less than a dollar, but she was thankful that she could now drive her car without constantly making the motion of ‘raise the roof’ at a hip hop show.
Bonus points if you have clandestine access to their vehicle and can fix a tiny problem that bothers them without them knowing.
A bit of the mark but extremely successful. The Isuzu Vehicross has a fan club. The members work together instead of compete. When a member notices a VX new to a yard due to ebay, fb, craigslist or whatever they post it. The local owners scavenge it. They keep what they want and post the rest at reasonable prices. In the event they cant get everything they post whats left and contact info.
We tend to do that in the MINI community as well. However, we cannibalize the car BEFORE we sell it to Pick-n-Pull. The ones we send are easy to identify as they all are missing the engines, but the crappy automatic transmissions are still there.
There is one strategy that all yardgoers must observe at all times, lest they out themselves as a noob.
Leave no fastener unscavenged.
I don’t care if you have brake caliper bolts at home. YOU POCKET THOSE BOLTS. Any loose fastener is game. You never know when you’re going to need a 10mm M10x1 5cm bolt or a 1/4″ E-clip. (If you’re me, it’s going to be 5 seconds after you used the last one in the batch you bought from Fastenal.)
Words of wisdom right here^
Words of a hoarder, but as a car hoarder, I wholeheartedly agree. Push Pins too if they are not mangled.
Unfortunately, more and more vehicles are equipped with the ‘use once’ fittings for high-torque applications. That caliper-to-steering knuckle bolt you just grabbed opportunistically may fail on you later…
I’ve found all kinds of neat items like meat cleavers, tools, and multitools. I’ve even found a flash drive that had some “personal” photography. I don’t see that anyone else stated the obvious, but I love getting lots of M6 & 8 nuts and bolts and German hose clamps (BMW and MB only). Since plating services charge by the pound, I always just add from my piles of collected junk.
My other big thing is to ransack cars within two rows of whatever car I am looking at because of hidden stashes of parts. My cars are all popular models that get hit hard and fast, but many times stuff is just hidden for a later return.
My best find has been a MINI JCW leather dash panel set for my R53. I got it for $20. It was in the absolutely worst looking MINI I had ever seen on the outside and honestly the inside looked like ass too, but then it had that dash… The last person who wanted it offered me $1,200 and so far I have resisted the urge to part ways with it as it is a unicorn part.
Having rare cars means everyone I know is on the lookout for 411s (and to a lesser extent, 944s, too). I will drop everything and head to a yard with decent spares.
I swear if anyone I know sees a 411 anywhere, even in like, Outer Mongolia, I get a message telling me about it. (Also, does that Mongolian 411 still have its side trim? I kinda want my chrome back. Can I bribe you to pull it?)
As for pulling the parts, I just kinda neatly disassemble things and bring friends for anything that needs extra leverage. It takes longer, but it’s only fair to the person missing that exact thingie that’s in the way.
I’m still angry about the 944 someone DROVE IN to a yard, with the parts still labeled in baggies, because their trashfire significant other said it was her or the car. Like, that’s not a lasting relationship if she’s that angry over the fact that you have your own hobbies. Pressuring you to dump a RUNNING VEHICLE that you were restoring at a Pick ‘N’ Pull should have made this obvious. The yard didn’t even have the heart to drill the oil pan to drain it. We descended on it like vultures and I walked away with a ton of spares, but what the hell? I hope he grew the confidence to dump her and (if she didn’t learn anything from that) she dies alone.
That car had a “PORSCHE”-text floor mat that I still use in the 411 and a ton of spares I grabbed for the Porschelump.
When I had my 924 I went to a yard in Omaha that listed one, it turned out to be a 924 Turbo. Most of the Turbo specialty mechanical bits were gone, but the lovely NACA ducted hood had been removed and used as a panel to keep the junk yard jack stands holding up the adjacent car from sinking into the mud. The horrah, the hooroah!
This makes me sad. :'(
If you find something good in a self-serve yard, and don’t have the ability to buy it right away, stash it in another car, ideally something nobody wants parts from, and buy it another day. This tactic also works on yards that have sales days to buy parts cheap. I’ve done this a few times.
Of course you risk someone else finding your stash. I’ve randomly found clearly stashed parts in other vehicles and bought them, probably ruining someone’s day.
Hilariously, this was also Max’s exact advice to Caroline on Two Broke Girls for how to nail the good stuff when shopping at Goodwill.
True but that show not hillarious. I do like Caroline in The Neighborhood though.
Two of the yards around here got wise to that and now actually look for and pull obvious ‘stash’ parts to sell at the counter. One of them also goes through the whole car and pulls any ‘extras’ like tools and the like to sell up at the counter. (Need a rusty screwdriver? They’ve got a bucket of ’em, $0.50 each.)
yep, batteries, phone charger and even cigarette lighters sometimes around here
Bring leverage, penetrant, and some method of impact (e.g. ball pein hammer) for persuading recalcitrant fasteners. Bring a friend for an additional pair of hands.
Best thing I ever found? A steering box for a ’72 Super Beetle.
I had swapped the stock wheels and tires for aftermarket aluminum wheels with 195/50s all around. The wider tires apparently put too much stress on the steering box and it broke. I could still steer, oddly enough, but there was one full revolution of play in the steering wheel. Lane changes were interesting.
New Super Beetle boxes were very expensive at the time (much more than for standard Beetles), so off I went with a buddy to the salvage yard. And there it was…
A decent-looking Super sitting crookedly on top of a worse off RX-7. The Mazda’s back glass was gone, so I was able to stand in that part and wrench at my leisure and at a convenient height.
Took the steering box to The Man and nervously asked how much it would be. He thought about it for a few seconds and gruffly said “20 bucks”. Huzzah!! I thanked him profusely and skedaddled before he changed his mind. Also because it was closing time.
Rock Rail front and rear TJ fenders on an about to be picked clean side swiped TJ. the lower door rails were gone on one side so the one remaining also came home. all for 35 bucks since they did not know what to classify them as.
My best advice is to take the junkyard car apart as carefully as you’d take apart your own. For one, it’s courteous; you might not need that wiring harness or piece of console trim, but someone else might. No need to ruin it. And also, it’s good practice for when you do take yours apart.
Yes, I hate junkyard hacks who ruin other parts to get to the ones they need.
Oh, and my best find was when I replaced the nasty steering wheel in my old Nissan Pathfinder. I found a perfect leather-wrapped 3-spoke wheel in a wrecked ’87 300ZX turbo, amd snagged it for $30. Fit perfectly, and transformed the interior of that truck.
This is the key right here.
Excellent advice! I often used junkyards to practice an unfamiliar job on something that was already dead. Really wish I’d done that on a blower motor install: it’s amazing how much stuff they stuffed in there. Never did get one vent correctly connected-and parts of the dash had rather sloppy fit-and-finish.
Of course, it’s much easier now we have digital cameras in our pockets. I think I was paying 50 or 75 cents for each Polaroid back then
I try to be a considerate guy, but 95% of what is sitting in the yard is going to the recycle mosh pit. I also don’t have the comforts of home and my full tool kit. If it is expedient to use the “Hulk Smash” method of disassembly I will. Though I try to keep the destruction limited to plastic and others bits that are pretty roached out already.
If you were writing for a primarily British membership, would you have to call this feature “Spannering Wednesday?”
So funny I almost tossed my biscuits!