Hot Rods Not Proud but I did it! Got a dumpster!

I just started welding all the junk together.

 

When all this covid took hold, & all the shows,swaps, & auctions i usually fill my (short) summer months with cancelled, I decided to turn my attention to my 110 yr old house. I started in ;ate April, with a new furnace, then windows, doors, trim, & now, finally siding. I'm doing all the work myself. & after a few months of no garage time, I rounded my way to the back where the garage, & pile of parts are located, & thought i should just start blowing this stuff out of here. The neighbors don't complain, but looking at it myself, i can see that they would have every reason to. I don't think i'll be dumping any of it, but, it would sure be nice to have some free space again. I guess if you get away from it for awhile, you begin to see that what you thought "I can use that " or "I can sell that, & make some money" is just takin up space. I might have to start spending money on swap spaces for next year

 

I keep adding metal to the old dead daily driver, some day my Son In Law will cart it to LaJoies. Bob

 

When I'm dead and gone that is exactly what will happen at my place, the kids will call in a dumpster and throw everything away, they know the huge all the '32 stuff is worth something but they will be too impatient to turn it into money and every thing will go pennies on the dollar.

If Brenda is still around she knows the value. HRP

 

Kinda the same predicament here. Neighbor and I have a lot of misc stuff from years of projects. Can't seem to get much interest but hate to throw in the dumpster. Alot of 57 Nomad glass that is nice! Several sets of small block center bolt valve covers (he used to change them quite often)Other 57 stuff too. A set of 15x8 AZ code corvette ralleys matching dates and I don't know what else. I have some 40 stuff (smalls) but reluctant to sell just yet. Orig NOS mint std grille. a mint 40 dlx grille,.two sets of restored wiper towers. two deluxe dashes totally restored and mint. Two restored 40 clusters converted to 12V with senders, several NOS 40 gauges, 4 restored clocks and alot of other new or repo stuff--hanging on this stuff for a bit but will see. Neighbor is ready to haul his to a dumpster. I'm trying to slow him down-he is also gonna sell his OT 68 Shelby GT 500 convert that is mint and has had for 40 yrs and maybe his 57 mint nomad as well. At 80 he is ready and at 77 I'm not far behind.

 

Last Summer a dumpster was plopped in the driveway across the street, the last of the original owners passed away, house was built in 1950. I asked the guy doing the cleanout if I could have a few things. Told him it was sad that all the the things from their lives were in the dumpster. Sad but true reply from him was "Everybody's life winds up in a dumpster." Bob

 

Well the dumpster is almost full and I have hardly made a dent in junky stuff let alone the stuff I need to sort through! And do you know the county recycler wants $9 a tire after I take them off the rim! The old Coates has been getting a work out today. So far I got 25 tires laying here, but at that price I may have to do a handful at a time to minamize the shock to the old wallet! But the bright side is My buddies where here last night for are weekly Gray Beards remember what it was like when we wheren't gray and my buddy noticed some of the tri five stuff. He works with a guy that is into that stuff so he gave him a call last night when he got home. The guy got called and came over this morning and bought two pairs of doors ,a deck lid and some bumpers. Only got a couple hundred, but they needed work and it felt better than maybe having to toss them. Oh well breaks over time to load more stuff. lol Larry

 

Problem with trying to give stuff away is that all the buddies want to see it saved but want you to store it until they need it.

 

- many years ago I took, along with other stuff, 26 wheels & most with tires - sold a few - put most in free pile - no takers - finally paid $2 each to just take 'em away - had to do the same when I moved - paid people a minimal amount to haul away some furniture that could not even give away - oh well

 

About 15yrs ago I hired 2 guys to come in and do a massive clean/haul. Closed off my shop (no look/no touch zone) and pointed them at my 3 barns, 4 12x16 sheds, and 2 20x20 garages that were crammed to the rafters with shit, and said "I Want 'em empty. Just sweep the floors and turn the lights off when you leave". I 'salted' each building with some 'pickers gold' then worked a deal that got everything cleared away by letting them keep everything in the buildings. These two guys show up with their 3/4 ton pickups, pulling some kind of 20ft homemade trailers with 4x8 plywood sides, and spent the next two and a half weeks filling and hauling. By day three the two guys had swelled to five, and the two truck/trailers increased to three. At the end of the first week the work crew had swelled to seven and stayed that way till the job was finished. Pretty good hard working bunch of guys, but just to keep them truly honest, I'd do some random 12ga target practice. Don't know what they did with the scrap building materials, but I was sure glad I didn't have to mess with the 30 water soaked bags of concrete or all the other building scrap. Figured the car shit and scrap metal went to the recycler. One day one of the guys asked me if I was gonna miss any of the stuff. I just replied, "What stuff?" Now days the kid that adopted me and hangs/helps out around the shop stores his sand toys and tools in one of the barns, but he knows the rules. If it hasn't been moved or touched in 2 weeks it's hauled away. The rest of the buildings sit empty. Funny thing is, to me, these buildings aren't empty. They're just waiting to fill their potential.

 

Larry's just making room for my stuff when I start cleaning out.

 

Kinda weird for me this thread popped up, I too am divesting myself of "stuff". I've built my last car, it's getting too hard to source stuff to build cars, example, rad hoses, every parts house had a hundred, you could take a bent wire in and get something, now there is nothing hanging from the walls. Junk yards were common, now they are squish yards, and the few scrap yards want a small fortune for parts.
I decided awhile back to unload some of my stash, I'm happy that someone will use the stuff I MIGHT use, I'll die with my 36, it'll get a huge suspension overhaul this winter, and some answers for those of you following my steering wheel shake issue. But, I'm not gonna start another car, I've done my last. If I don't move some stuff, it'll go to scrap when I croak, so better to move it now.
Good thread, timely.

 

My wife and I rented a 10 yard dumpster this spring, and started throwing out stuff I thought we should have a yard sale and try to sell. After feeling sad about the first couple of things I tossed it became cathartic. We filled that one, rented a SECOND one, filled that too. I tossed stuff from the shop that I'd been tripping over for years, and our basement is now empty.
This spring I tried to sell the (rebuilt) Hemi from my '52 DeSoto wagon project. I had offers at scrap price, people expected it to be given away so I pushed it under the bench, and just a couple weeks ago bought a Model A roadster body from a buddy who was tired of walking around it. After cleaning up the shop, I have room to work on it!

 

I've got a great neighbor of y'all's age and demeanor. He's handed me a fair bit of "junk" over the back fence making way to walk in his buildings. An adjustable panhard for a roundy-round. An old Weld Racing wheel with a pro-street tire (planned to make a bartop out of them.) A NOS pressure gauge here, a pair of cheap LEDs there, $100s worth of electrical supplies off his truck and his work-shop when I was building the wife's she-shed. I've also bought a few things from him too - ZTR for 1/2 of new, an upright air compressor (both of which were a good deal for both of us,) some cheap HorribleFright tools...
This guy knows how tough it is for a single income family to afford toys for dad, and I appreciate him and his friendship far beyond his stuff. He and his wife are two big reasons why I haven't moved out of this "city" already.
There's a 93 y/o guy at the end of the block, super swell guy, who plays with restored A's. I keep trying to get him to tell me a price for his "junk" so maybe the boy and I can cobble a jalopy, or at least spend time together fumbling with one. So far he just haws. Probably just as well as I have plenty of other "obligations" I need to focus on already.

 

I’m just arriving at that point where I start taking “stuff” to sell at the swap meets again when the virus shut them down. Like someone else said I can see what I’m going to need to finish the current projects and the rest can go. I even sold my mill and big band saw recently.
But the other day I needed an alternator for my Morris Minor woody project so I went upstairs and sure enough, I had one in stock. It probably would have been in the first load that went to the swap if there were any. Just for fun I counted all of the carburetors I have lying around the other day, I counted 82. But while having lunch I remembered a box I didn’t count, that pushes the count over 90. I guess it is time for me to thin it out.


Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

I don't know where you are in NW Montana but I just picked up a motorhome in Coeur D'Alene, ID, Monday and brought it back to Tennessee. I had all kinds of room for stuff and would have loved looking and probably buying had I known what you had available. No offense, but I took a look at stuff you have had for sale and found only 3 ads on the HAMB since 2019. I would have liked to find more people along the route back home that had stuff they've been sitting on and wondering what they're going to do with it.

 

I'm about 3 hrs east of CDA, ID. No I haven't sold much on here lately, most of the smaller stuff is gone. Shipping on large heavy stuff costs more than it's worth in most cases.. None of it is rare or sought after, just stuff...

 

A couple of nights ago, I was thrashing about the sheds - looking for a measurement for Gimpyshotrods. Nothing is worth the cost of boxing and shipping.

 

This is one thing I don't understand, we pay a recycle fee for every tire we buy, at least for the last 20 years or so. so why do they want more money when we recycle them?

 

I don't feel the same way. Hot rod parts have kept things afloat for me. The lockdown, forced client closures, and bankruptcies put a hurting on my business.

Usually, selling parts is nothing more than a side hustle but I've sold more in 2020 than I've sold in the last couple of years. Actually, I'm feeling kind-of lazy knowing there's some decent stuff I haven't posted or gotten back to people about.

If it's hung around for all those years, it can only mean a couple things. No one wants them for a reason or you're not getting them in view of the right people.

 

I did a few loads to the county dump that way over the last 5 years. Now I'm down to mostly the "real" stash. Been putting bits and wheels up for sale on the HAMB. Will be doing off-topic stuff on CL and FB marketplace this Fall. The goal is to get rid of anything that is stored on the floor and remove at least one wall of shelves in my top-secret room.

 

Very nice! I tried doing a similar thing a while back but ran out of places to put them.

 

Justification for human behavior is the basis for religion, philosophy, history, and a laundry list of other 'talk yourself blue to explain things away' routines. I think back to treks into the wilderness and always there's someone who starts talking about going back because of this, that and the other. The point is if you want to quit doing what you did and stopped, why nag yourself about it by pretending it felt good, which is my take on people who change from one behavior to another. Like quitting smoking: you either smoke, or you don't. There is no such thing as trying to quit; no intermediate step. So you quit dreaming and got rid of the junk that kept the dream alive. So what? I have always thought: HE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST JUNK WINS.

 

I was a swap meet vendor with Datsun Z and 510 parts. After a while the good stuff goes, then all that's left is the stuff that needs work and is not perfect. I found that most buyers don't want to put any work in improving the parts. Unless you are constantly buying more inventory you run out of the good stuff. After a time I got tired of all the hassle of swap meet selling, then I got tired of selling through CL and paying 300.00 storage a month. I brought everything home and piled it up around my yard. This was mostly sheet metal like doors, hatches and fenders. I got tired of looking at the junk, my Wife was very cool about it though, I know she didn't like looking at it either. Two loads in my long bed pick up brought everything to the recyclers where I made around two hundred dollars. I kept ten boxes of small parts. That was ten or eleven years ago. I just restarted selling stuff on CL a couple of months back. Shipping stuff even. My prices are at least double to triple what I was asking for before. Oh, it's still a hassle.

All you guys that like going to swap meets, buy stuff to help support the vendors! That old stuff isn't going to around for ever.

 

For you that think I gave up or threw money away. Here is an example of things I threw away. A 57 dash board I cut out of a 57 four door Bel Air that I drag out along some guys shed over 28 years ago. It flex up and down as I loaded it up because it was almost rotted in half! Gave a 150 for it and the guy thought it was the deal of a life time. At the time I was restoring a 57 four door hardtop for a customer. Somewhere in its life some one had put chrome reverse wheels on it. Now keep in mind 57 wheels are year specific, they have nubs stamped into the rims for the hub caps! without those rims stock full wheel covers will not stay on. forget what I charged him to blast .prime and paint the wheels or the time I spent repairing and buffing the wheel covers. I got 200.00 for the parts! I also sold him and restored some of the stainless trim and Bel Air side panels that where in better shape that his. I also repaired the front fenders and sold them at the Jefferson swap meets as well as the hood and deck lid. The 6 cylinder and 3 speed where sold to a club member and rebuilt and put in his 49 Chevy pickup. Then we have the dash. Someone was looking for an instrument cluster, no problem. Someone else wanted a radio another wanted a glove box door as well as someone else wanting the Bel Air dash Trim. I won't go into how much I made off that 150.00 investment. Or the countless other cars I bought and parted out over the last 40 years. But I will tell you this , none of that stuff owed me a dime! For all you that think you should hold onto your "GOLD MINES" or buy more and sit on it. Take it from someone who made a lot of money when there was money to be made. Good Luck to you because this market has been going down hill for years. This 34 is a perfect example. Built it a number of years ago for a good friend. He came down with Parkinson's a number of years back and could no longer get in an out very well. 28,000 a few years back. Took it to the Nationals, back to the 50's , adds in Hemmings and local shows up the ass, could not give it away. Lots of interest and a lot of that's a great price but no money. He finally traded a guy for a 80's build 57 hardtop because he could get in and out better. And you guys want to tell me that shit pile fenders are worth 500. and so so driver grade grills are worth 12 to 1500 and up. Like I said good luck to you all! Larry

 

I would never get tired of walking around that A roadster body!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Mostly his wife was.

 

Sounds like you could have made a few scrap metal runs and had a +$ flow, dumpsters are not cheap. I give more stuff away than sell it, a lot less hassle.

 

Dam it, I was in portage a week ago had I only known I could have fill my sister’s car with rusty car parts