A self-service junkyard is perhaps one of the most deeply underrated places that every car enthusiast should visit at least once in their life. Maybe you might find a rare Pontiac Aztek center console cooler or an awesome badge to hang on your wall! Apparently, junkyards were even cooler in the past.
Jason wrote about his Citroën 2CV and attempted repairs on his 1989 Ford F-150. Anonymous Person:
Back in the early 1990s I had a similar experience with a thermostat housing on the 250 straight-six in my old 1967 C-10 pickup. When I tried to remove the old thermostat housing to replace my thermostat, one of the bolts just snapped right off.
Luckily for me, on those motors, there’s both an upper thermostat housing and a lower thermostat housing.
I did not own a tap/die set back then, but I was able to get that lower housing off without breaking any bolts. It was early on a Saturday, and the salvage yard was open Saturday mornings, but it was almost an hour from where I lived. When I called them, they said that yes, they did have a few 250s in the yard and that I would have to pull one myself, so bring my tools. They also said that due to an off-road race, they would be closing early in about 30 minutes so if I wanted one, I needed to get there right away.
When I explained that I was about an hour away, the owner asked me, “Are you that guy with that blue ’67?” (I had been getting parts from him for a while now) I replied that I was. He said, “You’re good. Just get here when you get here, jump the fence, take what you need, and just pay me the next time you’re in the area.”
So I borrowed my mom’s car, drove down there, got my parts, (luckily the dogs were friendly and no cops drove by while I was jumping the fence) made it back home, swapped out the housings, (had to use RTV for the lower gasket) fired it up – and it worked! No leaks!
About two weeks later I was near that junkyard so I stopped in to pay the owner. I had to remind him as he had forgotten all about it. When I asked how much he wanted for both housings, he said, “5 bucks.”
I miss junkyards like that.
Burt Curry:
My aunt, a car collector herself, told me about a junk yard in the boonies of western Virginia, and I went to their office to inquire about it. They gave me directions to the remote yard, and I found all sorts of chrome and trim pieces to fit my ’63 Galaxie XL convertible. When I went back to the office and showed them my haul and asked what I owed, they asked ME what I thought I should pay. I said $10 and they agreed! Boy how I also miss those days.
Jason wrote about the Citroën C3 Pluriel on Friday. DialMforMiata:
A Jacques of all trades, a maitre of none.
Matt wrote about how he thinks Hyundai might be trying to steal the New York auto show. Eggsalad:
The way things have been going lately, I’m hoping for a second-generation Hyundai Excel for $4995. (A/C optional).
Have a great evening, everyone!
I’ve been to a handful of pull yards across western NC, and only one has been like this! I made quite a few trips back and forth to local yards when I was repairing my 1993 Ranger from an engine bay fire and the interior wear-and-tear of normal use. This was pre-covid, so perhaps this yard’s policy has changed, but I wish I lived closer so regular trips could be worth it.
I went in early on a Saturday in the dead of winter, this was likely in either ’18 or ’19. The office was a small shack heated by a wood stove with 4 old timers sitting around smoking cigars, old radios from 80s/90s hoopties lining the walls of said shack. Told them what I was looking for and got pointed to go out to the far yard…and was told to drive my car out there; to this day that is still the only yard that allowed me to drive my daily back there in order to transport my tools. I got my haul (speakers, interior parts, intake hoses and other engine parts that were better than what I had that was cooked) and brought it back…only to be told it was $40 for roughly $400 worth of parts online. Still the best service I’ve had at a self-service junkyard in all my visits.
Not many of these places around anymore in my neck of the woods that hang onto older cars. Most of what I see is mid-00s/early-10s and the occasional older sedan/van/truck. When I can find a yard that has older stuff sitting in the weeds, I know I’m in for a good time.
45-50 years ago when I was scouting the yards looking for Corvair parts, there were a bunch of them in the south end of San Jose on Monterey Highway.
They were all self serve at the time. Engines, trannys and differential cases were sometimes emptied onto the ground. Multiply that by 200 or so cars, add rainwater and stir with the forklifts used to move the wrecks, which churned most of the place into grey mud several inches deep in places.
But most of the cars were made in the 50s and 60s, some with barely any damage, possibly blown engines, and at the bottom of their depreciation curves.
I recall thinking at the time what a shame it was to crush all these cool parts, especially interior chrome and outside trim, and that someday they would be worth a lot to the right person.
Well, that day is now, the parts are gone, and fortunately the few yards that are left are running with much stronger environmental controls, but it was fascinating back in the day seeing how styling was expressed in metal at the dawn of the jet age.
Best part of junkyarding back in the old days was fighting snakes, mud, and overgrowth exactly where you needed to lie down to unbolt something from underneath that ’72 Duster stuffed back in the weeds in 1982 and had been sitting there another 8 years.
I cracked a tail light on a Taurus in the 1990’s. The local salvage yard quoted me one for less than half the price of the dealer’s quote for a new one. When I picked it up, it was new in box with all of the Ford labeling on it. Weird, but helpful!
I miss junkyarding. Bought a lot of good Jeep parts over the years for my XJ’s.
I love going to the junkyard. I have found so many little oem upgrade parts for my cars over the years (back when I owned older stuff) like roof rails, crossbars, fog lights w/ stalks and relays to upgrade a base model, and even random junk like a missing wiper bolt cap that otherwise would be $20 to order.
Recently, I found a pristine oem axle for my wife’s Forester after replacing hers with a junk NAPA axle that vibrated right out of the box. $400 new from Subaru, or $30 at the local salvage yard, and a couple thousand miles later, it’s still vibration and split-boot free!
On the hunt for a junkyard valve cover for my recently acquired Vehicross now!
While not at the same grassroots levels of the junkyards mentioned in those comments, I too miss what junkyards used to be and got a stark reminder of it recently.
In San Diego where I grew up close to the border used to be 4 corporate owned self serve junkyards. In my teens and early 20s I pulled tons of parts from there and had a side hustle selling them on eBay. I have pulled more Merkur Scorpio interior switches and Sterling 825 front corner lights than probably anyone in history.
In my late 20s and 30s I built and repaired my 24 Hours of Lemons racer (first the Porcubimmer, then a Christine replica, and finally The Homer) with tons of parts from those yards – heck, the fake exterior door handles on The Homer were actually interior door handles from a Renault Dauphine I found there.
I went back there a few weeks ago to get some parts for my recently acquired ’81 Durango and it’s just sad. Only one yard is left, and they no longer group cars by make. If you’re looking for a type of car you tell them at the entrance and they print out the location of the car. It’s basically no longer possible to stumble into parts you didn’t expect. Back in the day I remember going to the Ford section and wandering around and randomly finding parts for my LTD I didn’t know I wanted, or wandering the Imports section and finding weird stuff like the afforementioned Renault. Once I unexpectly found a 1-of-500 ’86 Shelby Omni GLH-S and I got a bunch of parts for my standard Omni GLH.
And of course now because there’s only one yard left, any desirable parts get pulled immediately. The yard had one Fox Body Mustang that had arrived the week before I went and by the time I got there it was picked clean. The only thing I was able to get off it was an interior dead pedal.
It was pretty depressing to see a place that had a pretty big impact in my early years gone to shit and forced me to concede that those days are now over.
I’ve only had he misfortune of darkening the door of a local salvage yard once since moving south. They were so rude and unwelcoming that it was amazing that they stayed in business at all. They also flat out refused to allow me in the yard to check out their inventory.
I used to source used parts at a u-pull-it yard in Vermont back in the day all the time. However, the attitude back then was very much like the attitude I recently faced: piss-poor. They act as if you’re gonna rob them blind while you’re picking all of the gold out of a totaled ’89 Civic.
While I love strolling through a junkyard – it’s never been made enjoyable by their owners. I’ve been to five separate yards and met the same attitude at every one of them.
I assumed the attitude was universal, maybe a freshman-level course in the Scrapyard Maintenance program at UTI.
There’s a guy in Upstate NY near my sister’s house who has an old-time junkyard full of amazing stuff. I’ve pulled parts for my Travelall each time I’ve been up there, and he cuts me a deal because I bring him a 6-pack of Genessee each time I visit. He’s in his late 70’s and his politics are not the same as mine, but we have an unspoken rule to avoid that subject and talk cars, and I’ve never had a bad time.
As a young car-obsessed kid, I can confirm that the local, Papaw-owned junkyards are/were the best. The old guys that owned one here would just let me wander around and look when I was a teen. No, I didn’t have a car at the time. I was just fascinated to see what all I could stumble upon. And it was great.
Unrelated to the COTD, but related to the lead photo.
My first vehicle was a 1993 Mazda B2200 like the one pictured. It was my pride and joy, I took excellent car of it. When the time came to move up to something newer/nicer (Mazdaspeed6), I sold the B2200 to my younger brother who treated it like he treats all of his possessions, like disposable crap. After a few years of abuse, he loaded the bed with firewood and then drove it too quickly over some train tracks, cracking the frame. It wasn’t taco’d like the one pictured, but the bed was touching the cab. Part of the problem was the truck had a fully boxed frame, which meant dirt and moisture would get stuck in the frame rails and rot out from the inside. I still miss that truck.
I miss my B2000 as well. That little mule was a reliable workhorse through college and for four years afterwards, when I was running my own contracting business.
Count me as another B-series owner (not the Fords) that had a B2000 split in two because of rot.
My family has had 3 B-series pickups, first was a 1992 B2600i which was my dad’s primary vehicle for a long time. I had a B2200 which died an early, unfortunate death due to my own screw-up. Last was a 1990 B2600i 4×4 which my dad and I shared when we needed to do truck things. I used in winters in Colorado when my primary car was a Mini Cooper S. Amazing, durable vehicles and I’d love to find another good one.
I’ve never had a b series, but I’ve got a brother like that!
I buy wholesale cars by the truckload for a living and I can tell you that there is alot of junk out there… and good, solid information on what car models last and what doesn’t…
What does?
Toyota Camry
Honda Civic/Accord
Nissan Altima’s before 2012
What does not last worth a shit…
ANY GM car with the 1.4 turbo.
Hyundai Sonata/Kia Optima
Dodge Dart/Chrysler 200/anything Fiat
Anything European.
What does a junk car buyer drive?
A Mitsubishi Outlander.
“What does not last worth a shit… ANY GM car with the 1.4 turbo.”
They’re not all bad. I bought the wife a used 2015 Chevy Cruze for her b-day in 2016.
10 years, and almost 100,000 miles later, it’s still going strong. She loves it. So far we’ve replaced the valve cover, the ignition (coil) module, the water pump, and one rear brake caliper due to rust. But, living in the salt belt, all cars rust.
We plan on keeping it for another 10 years. I just gave it a good washing and interior detailing this past weekend.
Hope you have a spare turbo ready for when – not if – it fails. Or have a fund for replacing it.
At least with the garbage 2.4L as long as you kept oil in it it would generally run until the timing chains failed.
Changing the oil certainly helps.
Every 3000 miles.
This tracks.
You could have just cut the sentence off after “Any gm car.” gm excels at making their vehicular appliances disposable, especially the cars.
I don’t expect the civic and accord to stay on that list for much longer now that they’ve gone almost entirely to CVTs. Maybe the civic because it’s smaller and lighter.
Not all GMs.
I had a 1995 Chevy S-10 which was such a great little truck. I had it for 17 years (1999-2016) and would still be driving it if it hadn’t rusted to the point of collapse. But I live in the salt belt, and every vehicle rusts. Mechanically, though, it was a very reliable vehicle. Other than spark plugs, tires, batteries, brakes, and oil/filter changes, the only two things I had to replace on it were the heater core and the blower fan motor. After 285,000+ miles, it still had its original clutch and the parking brake even still worked.
Its replacement, a 2010 GMC Canyon is still going strong with 163,000 miles. The rocker panels are rusty, but it’s rock-solid dependable.
You didn’t entirely read what I wrote, did you?
Also, 31- and 16-year-old trucks don’t really speak for the current company, their cars, nor their recent wares.
I read it. The GM part was only one sentence after all.
“You could have just cut the sentence off after “Any gm car.” gm excels at making their vehicular appliances disposable, especially the cars.”
And I agree with you that older GM vehicles were probably built to last longer than a lot of the cr*p they build today.
I guess I’m getting old, as my Canyon still seems like a relatively new truck to me. I also owned a very dependable 1967 C10 for 10 years before the S-10 but I purposefully didn’t mention it because it was older and that’s when they really made trucks to last. You could walk on the roof of that truck without even making a dent.
In addition to the wife’s 2015 Cruze, we also bought a 2024 Trax LS back in 2024. So far it’s been a great little wagon. We plan on keeping it for decades as well. (but I don’t plan on ever attempting to walk on the roof of that one) 🙂
Had a great PnP junkyard near me in Freeport, Maine. Had all sorts of VWs, Volvos, and Saabs back in that era of my life. Saved a TON of money. Good times, and just wandering around exploring was fun too.
The most fun I’ve had in a junkyard was one that was explicitly NOT a ‘do it yourself’ yard, but they got in an ’86 Country Squire and I wanted ALL of the wood trim. They sent me back there myself where I proceeded to not only pull most of the trim, but got to play with the three junkyard dogs that hung around me / killed snakes while I was there.
One of the old, grey muzzled dogs that sat in the wagon through the entire day I was there even followed me to the parking lot and tried to get in my car. I regret not asking the yard if I could just take them home…
Good Boys just make life better, don’t they? Kind of wish my life was conducive to owning a dog rather than being the servant of a cat. When I retire.
If I wasn’t still in an apartment at that time I would have been in a much better position to take her in. However, as soon as I did get a proper place a pregnant cat appeared in my garage a year into it and now I’m a cat owner!
That cat distribution network is more efficient than Amazon. 🙂
Yay!
I feel included!
BTW, the owner of that salvage yard was named Bubba. 🙂
I concur.