Technical Where have all the junk parts & Parts cars gone?

I paid 500 including shipping for a pretty decent driver's side door for my 31 Vic. The top of the old door is rusted out as it sat on it's side in the dirt for probably 40 years before the guy I got it from got it. Figure I paid about 350 for the door.

Around here I'd say that is the big truth on prospective donor rigs. The scrappers were going door to door and farm to farm hunting anything made of metal and on top of that a lot of guys who had a lot of old and not so old rigs sitting out in the in the pasture hauled them in for scrap or sold them to the local wrecking yards. One local yard was paying 150 minimum for anything with a title and a lot of potential drive train donors hit the yard then.
My friend down the road 3/4 of a mile has what amounts to vintage tin national park and word is that he will sell of the cars and car parts now but I never make it down there when he is home as he drives truck. He and his dad scrounged every old piece of tin out of the sage brush in this area years ago.
I have to agree with the guys who said that what used to not be a decent donor car is now a buildable project car for a lot of guys and for me my 31 Vic qualifies for that as I'd bet a lot of guys looked at it in that time frame and decided that it was in too rough of shape to be a viable project for rod or restoration. Some have questioned my sanity since I hauled it home. Just look at how many guys on here have or are building a vintage body from parts either used or new replacement pieces.

 

A lot of them are gone or are now project cars. I'm still hauling stuff home whenever I can. Either because the price was right or because I'm trying to save it from getting crushed. I've seen too much disappear with no account of where it went. Now, everytime I see something that might be free, cheap, or otherwise unwanted I'll stop and ask. They may not be the most popular makes/models but I've acquired a lot of neat things just by asking.

 

That's exactly the reason why I haven't sold & shipped anything in the last few years. One Hamb member (A stand up guy good to his word) did drive here from Michigan and bought parts from a 53 ford truck. He even removed the parts himself.

 

I rely almost solely on Craigslist. I'd like to check out a swap meet someday its the season for them now...if I can't find it I put a wanted ad up and let it come to me. I also never take the first deal usually the 1 st guy wants a mint the 3rd -4th respondent has what you want for next to nothing....I'm surprised you can't find those door tops there were millions made and by now most that are left are rotten at the bottoms

 

Interesting replies and general outlooks, I did get a reply from a HAMB member with two tops that he will cut off, so I only need two more. I list a lot of non automotive crap on "that auction site" if is sells for something over the cost of postage I'm happy. If I get a box of free stuff, it costs me nothing to box it except the cost of the tape. Bob

 

So what? Its ok that he or I or anyone else is a hoarder. If we didn't hoard them up The scrapper,s would get them. Just last week I attended a estate auction. and I bid on probably 50 items everything from old machine shop equiptment, fire trucks , farm tractors & bulldozers. I made the scrapper pay full scrap price. Towards the end of the auction he must of tapped out. I bought a swing set with a chainfall for $25 a U4 international power unit for $75 and the last item I bought was the best buy ive made in many years. A 1939 D4-7J Caterpillar bulldozer for $750. It has a cab ,Hyd blade and it is in really good shape. good undercarrage and factory electric start pony engine.Didn't run because the pony engine wouldn't start. The magneto wasn't making spark. I filed the points and attached a coil making it into a dist. If I hadn't been present with my hoarding addiction and Ten Grand in seed money the scrap man would have got it all for a pittance. I made him pay $4000 for a not running Ford Backhoe and three grand for a old Allis Chalmers bulldozer.

 

Hauled a tagalong trailer to a buddy's house from 10 miles away... his nephew was there, he stinks to high Heven, walked up to my truck door, says guess what I got ?, [I almost said AIDS?], he says a '34 ford 3 window body... I started to ask if it was a $100 body or a $1000 body or ?... I only got as far as the $100 part and he said he'll take it...
Knowing his stench I bought a six-pack... of PINE TREE air fresheners, peeled 'em back and threw them all behind the seat... so strong they made my eyes water every time the truck stopped... still was a bad 45 mile ride ... each way !
never had to unload it from the truck $ $ $ in 1995.

 

Isn't today national punch a scrapper in the face day? I know it is because I started it 5 years ago as a joke, but now everyone is complaining about the lack of old tin. Nothing wrong with hoarding. The reason WE won WWII is because the Axis powers ran out of natural resources. Old tin from farms, gas rationing and recycled rubber played a major part in our victory. Scrappers who send scrap to china for a quick $$ , ... well you get the point.

 

'26 T coupe passenger quarter at a Windham junk yard, hand painted on it was
BEAT THE AXIS
PAY YOUR TAXES...
wouldn't sell it...

 

not a lot of swap meets in my area anymore.
nature has had its way with the older cars. when i bought my first shoebox, it was a 25 -year-old car; people i knew found 'boxes that had been owned and driven by blue-haired ladies and were practically new cars. $1,000 was what the "pick of the litter" cost then. i put a lot of the blame for high prices on these auctions you see on t.v.--also on the buyers, "fat daddies" who only view a classic car as something to sell to someone else for more money.
asking too little can scare off buyers. i had a 1,000-mile pair of edelbrock heads for sale for $150 at a swap meet 25 years ago. no interest. the next year, i sold them for $250! just raising the price $100 or so was the difference.

 

Hoarding is good. Hoarding is fine. It's the only reason any of us find anything we need. My yard would look like the river front in Deliverance if not for lack of space.
I kind of physically resemble some of the actors in the woods anyway...

Scrapping is also good. Scrapping is fine. Since the Recession, there's a lot of meth addicted, toothless guys tooling around in rickety F-150's from the nineties, finding anything metal they can get their shaking hands on, that are not breaking into MY house or YOUR house to steal a digital camera or laptop. (I hate glazing window panes and rescreening storms).

If you have a problem with people recycling metal, then YOU should buy it first and keep it from being scrapped. It's not up to some old couple eating cat food, trying to make it on Social Security to keep their field or barn full of old cars, so that when some dude needs part of a trunk lid for his A, they can have the "honor" of selling it for all of the $20 someone might offer, then make a thread on HAMB bragging about how they found some old tin for next to nothin'.

 

Many old cars are in the woods where you don't normally see them. A friend of mine works on timber harvesting equipment. He comes in contact with old cars every so often. Recently found an old 4 door Buick with a strait 8.
He worked out a deal with the owner, got it running a few weeks later.

 

guy I know is a surveyer, sees the far corners of a bunch of properties with every job... has a heard of A and B tin... only wants to show off... none for sale...

 

So i guess the odds of me finding a left rear lower quarter panel for my 32 3 w are slim and far between. BUT i did find it out in the country along with 2 65 vettes a59 vette and some camaros. The stuff, well not as much as it once was. but some still out there. good luck!!I mean that in the best possible way!!

 

I do, to the tune of over five figures last year alone. And I pay much more then the scrap yards. Case in point, last week a scrapper texted me with a 33 chevy sedan for scrap. I told him to cut off all the sheet metal (rear section, cowl doors) and I'd give him $200 for it. Next morning he texted he had scrapped it for $112 without pulling the sheet metal cause he needed money right away and it was too much work !!

 

I know. You are right over the border from MA in NY. I've been on your website scores of times over the past bunch of years. I'm a huge fan of your company, anyone that is into old cars that has visited your site will understand. As soon as I save enough to start a new project I will be heading west to pay a visit. You are putting your money where your mouth is, there's a lot of people who whine about old tin disappearing, then a minute later whining about the rising costs at swap meets, the hypocrisy is frustrating.

Maybe all the scrappers around here in Boston have no teeth because of National punch a scrapper day? So I could be wrong about the meth, (but they do seem a bit wigged out).

 

The old steel may have gone to China but came back to haunt us all disguised as bolts

 

In the recycling part business, scrap is the end of the line. You do not make money on scrap compared to what you do with parts, etc. The price of scrap should ONLY dictate the starting point of what your paying for your inventory. Higher scrap prices do set a higher starting point for inventory acquisition price cost. This is passed on to the consumer. Higher prices along with depleted acquisitional inventory availability (auto spell check just blew up ) led to what this post is all about. The unavailability of decent reasonable model A door tops.

 

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/crush-alert-i-told-you-so-bertram-tx.166325/

 

I'm still building cars and just keeping an inventory of parts available to pull from. Years ago I had to stop a build or two because when I needed a certain part, I couldn't find it and decided that I would never let that happen again. Once I needed a 32 dash for a project and nobody would sell me one so over time I saved up a dozen of them. I'm down to just four or five of them left. (I started using 40 dashes sometimes instead)

 

Bottom line is good stuff is getting harder and harder to find. And with a signature line saying you don't think about finishing anything I don't think I would contact you with parts for sale. Might be something to think about.

 

I don't mind at all if you collect parts or even buy and store every old part and car you can find. But, I merely wanted to point out that for every thread on the HAMB about the saving of old parts, there is at least one, and I'm willing to bet more like five, articles about people hoarding and the family who doesn't want to sell anything because some day they are going to fix it up. Meanwhile it rots into the ground. Just saying there can be more than one view point to collecting parts.

 

Yep for doing extra work for only $90 I would have did the the same as the scrapper. You gotta make it worth their time.

 

Back in the day I sent hundreds of vehicles to the scrapper. Some where pretty nice. I would love to have the tail lights and other trim off a 56 chevy I sold to the crusher. I bought it for $35 running car, Took out the battery ,radiator and speedometer cluster. Sold the 235 for $40 used the trans in my Pk. Still have the 370 pumpkin. And sold the body for $57. To me it was a parts car. No title and4 doors raggedy interior . Rusty and dented body. If none ever got scrapped they still wouldn't have any market value.

 

Best post of the thread. Fact is, vintage iron is still pretty cheap in real terms. You can buy a running Model A Tudor or pickup in my neck of the woods (Iowa) for $8000 every day of the week. Coupes are about $12-15k.

That is simply not rare or expensive enough to justify heroic efforts to save each and every car that gets scrapped. Without rarity, there isn't value, and without value there is limited motivation to save cars.

 

Funny - Just to make sure I wasn't making a liar out of myself I quick jumped onto Craigslist for my area and found this:

https://waterloo.craigslist.org/cto/6111542990.html

An $11,000 running, driving, titled and licensed 5 window coupe. I got nothin'....

 

No, Keep the car, $200 for about 100 LBS of sheet metal. (worth $11.00 at the scale). As you can see by the photo, probably not have even needed to sawzall it off, just pull hard.

 

I've tried on multiple occasions to get ahold of this guy. Damn near impossible! I've tried to make an appointment to come to his yard, but he never responds.

 

Of course old parts are a non-renewable resource, and the economics around them will reflect that. That their non-renewability is not natural but statutary would make for quite an interesting political-economic analysis.

 

I know he's been out buying a few cars lately and been busy. call him and tell him your interested in one of the cars on his website and want to come and look at it. that will probably get his attention