Folks Of Interest What's the coolest thing you have found dumpster diving?

We have a farmers sale at the end of every month in the fields just down the way from us, where I walk the dogs each day.
After the sale which is only on for the day they tidy up and throw all the unwanted items into the Skip ( Dumpster).
Well As I was walking by the skip twos days after it should have been moved I noticed a pair of seats tatty but comple and even with all the seat belts.

I needed a pair of seats for my 41 COE, so I asked the question and they said yea take them off.
Well with a little work , (they had to be cut down about 10" in height, and a full recover in red, they fit the truck just great.






What do you think

 

Reminds me of one the old tongue in cheek quotes my Dad used to say; "She was only the Moonshiner's Daughter, but I loved her still".

 

swapped it for a couple of 1932 v8 motor mounts and a 36 rear.

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Problem is this ..... in the world we now live in, dumpster diving today may uncover the guy who's been missing for a few months !

 

Not a dumpster dive ,but a dumpster dump. I was working for the park service at the Grand Canyon and got transferred to Pa. and threw away about a half a dumpster full of mid sixties Chevy parts that I couldn't take with me. Blocks, heads, body parts. Put it in the local trade paper for 2 months and no takers, so into the dumpster it went. Rust free Arizona Chevy 2 fenders etc. Nova 283 block.
Made me sick, but life goes on.

 

Dumpster/Scrap bin dive...Lots of good glasspack mufflers & pipes from the local shops.

Oh yeah & once i went to a yardsale ... Somebody had rented out spaces in their barn for storage. They were Selling off the stuff left behind..The sale had the usual baby clothes & household trinkets...BUT on the way back to the car...I says to myself...Whats that shiny thing sticking out of the dumpster ? ....Well it turns out it was a pair of Stacks off a Semi and a whole bunch of other new truck parts under them-shiny diamondplate-gaskets-a big box of tailights..cablights..markerlights.. Cases of new bulbs..chrome aircleaner trim.. I heard the ladies running the sale were getting a real kick out of watching this "Dirty Country boy" digging thru their "trash"...Haha the jokes on them... My car was Completely stuffed & looked like the Beverley Hillbillies leaving-with all the stuff tied on the roof. Well... I traded the stacks for some hotrod stuff & haven't had to buy bulbs or trailerlights for years .

 

We have a small carnival near our home every spring close to where I walk my dog every day. It is not unusual to find money on the ground after the rides are packed up and hauled away. The biggest bill I have found was a $20 but over the years I have probably pick up close to $100.

In high school (early '70s) my shop teacher was throwing out some oil filters that looked familiar. They were used to filter hydraulic oil on one of the shop presses that was being replaced. Turns out they were the same as the oil filter in my 56 Y-block 292. I got 6 of them and I don't think I ever had to buy another one for my old Ranch Wagon.

I have a friend that is a bit short on income so she has a yard sale once a month with stuff she picks up from trash piles on the side of the road. Last week, one of my neighbors had thrown out a queen size bed frame with nice head and foot boards and some storage ottomans. I grabbed those for her next sale and she was delighted. She thought she could easily get $50 out of them.

 

Interesting thread, One man's Junk is another man's Jewel ! Comes to mind.

 

Me and buddie was about age 13, found a complete Ford 1947 de luxe steering wheel in mint condition! In a dumpster.
I gonna ask if he still have it ,next time I met him.

(This was in the early 80's in sweden)

 

We lived just down the street from the Lay's potatoe chip distributor.
For about 6 months we lived on that stuff. Red dyed pistachios made my fingertips pink.
All out dated cases of chips and soda and the junk food you love so much at 26.
One night a cop saw us going through the fence on the way out with the booty.
After the explaination and some conversation to establish our non criminal activity save trespassing,
he laughed, and told us to stop doing that. We filled his trunk and never went back.

 

Another time we found boxes with hundres and hundres of dia frame pictures taken in the streets of SAN FRANSISCO in the early sixties!!
A LOT of neat old cars on them I remember.

(In a dumpster in Sweden early 80's)

 

I have 2 good picks from dumpsters:
1) At a friends body shop, and he is throwing away a good OT Pantera windshield. It had no scratches. It didn't quite make it IN the dumpster. It would have within 5 minutes if I wasn't there. I took it and sold it to a local Pantera resto shop for $100.
2) The city has "clean up" days from time to time and puts out huge dumpster around the neighborhood. I go to put my junk into one and find: two 327 Chevrolet bare blocks, a late model LT1 block and crankshaft. I still have the 327s in the shed, but traded off the LT1 stuff.

 

A buddy I was with pulled an Eaton supercharger out of a dumpster near GM Powertrain. I still have the blower, but haven't used it for anything

 

About 25 years ago, a friend who was working on the Fed Center in building maintenance spotted a Clausing drill press in the dumpster. It was thrown out because it was malfunctioning. He dug it out by himself, took it home , cleaned it up & lubed it. It worked great for him for several years.

 

Not found in a dumpster, but I saved some stuff from going in a dumpster.




These were kinda cool I guess, if you're into that sort of thing

 

Everything I find is cool because it is never something I would actually be looking for.
I did have a great time with a rusty old bike I once found for my youngest Grandson. He picked out the skulls and other things he wanted on the bike and even helped me a little fixing it up so he could put it in a "Spring Dust Off" display with one of my cars in our local Mall. He also liked showing the pedal car I had built years before for his older Brothers. Sadly the Boys get bigger but we kept their stuff and maybe someday they can let their kids enjoy them.

 

Never found anything car related but found a ton of fireworks when taking out the trash at my Daughters apartment. My Grandson has ben setting them off for years.

Gary

 

I pulled a pair of new chevelle sb headers out of a dumpster with a 1/4" hole that some guy had put in them with a punch, trying to make clearance. Welded up the hole and sold them. But does it count if you know they are in the dumpster before you dive?

 

A place I worked bought many hundreds of dollars worth of stainless pipe fittings (mistake by foreman). We were told to get them into the dumpster before anyone saw them. We were not allowed to remove anything from the dumpster so I called my friend who is a scrapper and he agreed to remove them at no charge. He was a happy camper. (So was the foreman).

 

Went to dump the trash and came back with a trailer made from an old ford truck with a cool camo paint job. Needed a few repairs but was well worth the work. Anybody know the year?

 

The kitchen sink....seriously! I worked at a plumbing supply house and they threw out this stainless steel double kitchen sink because the customer wouldnt' accept it..said it had a scratch in it but I couldn't see it. Was in my kitchen for years.
Found a pair of garden hose reels next to the dumpster one day. Still have 'em. Found a 350 chevy short block next to the dumpster one day and swap-meeted it...also found a ford van 3rd seat in the dumpster and dug it out, shortened it to fit my 33 ford pickup and re-used the original houndstooth cover on it.

 

Coming home late one night from a bar I came across this outside a neighbors house. It was buried under a pile of other stuff waiting for the trash man, so I pushed it home.

 

My best one is working as a shopfitter at night, stripping out large retail stores. 20 tone of steel racking was going in the bin. 6 foot high bin sides were a struggle for the labourers so i backed my ute up every night and said here load it in my ute it's easier! Made an extra $600 a night! Slow drive home though! The retail stores were paying $600 a skip and filling it with steel to go to the tip.... crazy!

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The Ford pickup bed trailer is '51-'52 as indicated by the flat bed sides. '48-'50 has a raised panel and slight difference in rear fenders to match,

 

One thing I remember pulling out of a dumpster was a set of motorcycle headers, the two into one style off of some 4 cyl Japan bike. Had some road rash on the small pipes from where it looked to have hit the pavement. I cut the megaphone ends off and put them on my ot pickup, made good chrome tips for it. Used one of the small pipes on my lawnmower to route the exhaust down away from me, had the only lawnmower in town with a chrome exhaust tip!

 

6 months ago I pulled out a Coleman 1500 Watt generator. Cleaned the carb, fixed the wiring connections and it worked on the first pull. A friend owned a recycling business for a short time and you wouldn't believe the stuff that came in. Lathe tooling, a USA made tubing notcher, old iron fireplaces, every cable type I could ever want. Great resource while it lasted.
On the other hand, I 've lost some things by mistakenly setting them by the dumpster, too. My cousin's new 1973 Apple Crate bike when I was a kid, for example.

 

I always check as I walk past a skip. One of my favourites was an aluminium fold up bike which the guy said give me £10 for, I sold it for £170 that afternoon. Found a cool 1948 devilbiss air compressor and got it running. It made a great schluppitty schluppity noise like the milking machine my grandpa ran on the farm when I was a kid.

I've been building up a "project fund" selling stuff I've picked up for the last couple of years to fund the next project it's up to about £8,000 at the moment and I estimate I've got about another £1-2k currently drip feeding out through eBay.

It's getting harder now here now though, they used to have a "re use" section of the recycling centre where they didn't mind if you grabbed stuff, but these days they've sold off the rights to this stuff so you're not allowed any more.

I live in one of the richest parts of the UK outside London and the stuff that people throw away is mind boggling. It offends me that we as a species are throwing away so much of value. Maybe it's because I grew up on a farm where I learned to maintain and repair things rather than just throw them away. I work in building / property maintenance now and some of the property I see being built is not maintainable. It's designed to be used for 30 years and then knocked down and replaced. Does nobody else think this is insane?

I've just spent two weeks this summer repairing and repainting the 100 year old original windows on my house, total cost to me approx £2k my next door neighbours (identical house) just spent £20k replacing the exact same windows with UPVC double glazing which will need replacing in twenty years time.

Sometimes I don't think evolution is working

 

My future ex wife ....


Jim

 

Which dumpster? Might have some resale value............