Coolest thing you have ever found at a wrecking yard???

Not HAMB worthy, but a complete clutch/brake pedal assembly for a 351C 72 Torino for $8.
Found a nice leather jacket in a trunk, wore it out of the yard.
Found a thong under a seat for a BIG girl

 

An OT '70 Buick GS Stage 1 car less engine and tranny for $450.00.
My buddy that ran another yard found a three or four foot long rubber snake in the trunk of a car. Said snake was placed in strategic areas to see if you were paying attention. Usually just underneath the part that they had just pulled for you. That never got old. LOL

 

A complete 275hp 327 with 1.94 camel-hump heads out of a '67 Impala that the yard owner gave to me for free. (That was 1979.) Cool because it was free.

Same yard: A beautiful stock 1961 Impala bubbletop with 3x2bbl 348, all there, straight as a pin, ready to drive home for $1200. (That was also 1979.)

 

Where is that yard at?

 

you guys suck
all we have in junk yards around here are tempos and k-cars

 

I also worked at a wrecking yard in the mid sixties. The owners would buy cars from the New Orleans police impound. After selecting the choice vehicles they would bid 1$ on all the other less desirable cars. They often got a hundred or more this way. This was a real treasure trove of
goodies. Such as guns, tools, coins, knives, hard cash, photos and other
items. The real finds were in the trunks! I gathered many great parts and pieces from this source. By the way finding human parts was not all that unusual given the fact that people were not very inclined to use seat belts in those days. That and the fact of solid steel dash boards, and no air bags or crumple zones. made a crash much more likely to cause big time injury. The most common thing was teeth in steering wheels,I really hated those. Then in later years these guys moved into metal recycling.
I am still friends with them and help to maintain some of their equipment
with welding repairs and such. The aluminum that comes through is where the goodies show up now in the form of wheels and manifolds, carbs
and such. After Hurricane Katrina they bought millions of dollars of scrap
from the clean up effort. I was not able to get there to check it out but a friend told me it was incredible how much car stuff was included. The volume was so large that they were shipping truck loads daily. Who knows what got away. MickeyC. from the bayou.

 

I found some old 15x6 torq thrusts on an s-10 that looked like it had rolled over.
40 bucks!

When I got my Chevy II, I found 1 well preserved mouse skeleton, fossil like lol
a TON of chicken bones under the backseat... somebody must have liked eatin KFC in the back?
an old peel top Dr Pepper can in mint condition under the pass seat lol.
Oh, also found some wrenches and a 71 motorcycle plate in the rear rockers, stuff fell off the edge of the trunk panels and sat in there.

-Gary

 

I found a 35 Ford 5 window coupe in a junkyard once, check my previous posts from like 3 years ago.

 

Thats bad ass, I want one.

 

i havent found to much hot rod stuff and my dad never let me have too much cause it was worth money, but i did convince him to let me have a set of 85 corvette aluminum heads. But i have found all sorts of crap, i grew up in the junk yard so i had a lot of fun in the yard, my dads stories are where its at guns, money, body parts, you name it. but we been in buisness since 1933

 

I have found a couple. Found a stripped '63 Galaxie 427 car that I bought for $100 & sold for $2000. Found a '68 Hurst Olds that wasn't for sale so I bought all the parts off of it for mine. Several others slip my mind. Here in Oklahoma you would be shocked at what lies in junkyards

 

At a junkyard right over in Carson city! Found 3 18" wide 5 wheels and 1 studebaker 18" wheel and 20" dodge wheel. Milk truck wheels galore! You don't want to know the price I paid for them.

 

How much did you have to pay the junkyard owner for that find?

 

A deuce grill shell w/insert that was screwed to the front of a tractor. Got it for $50!

 

Years back, in Illinois at Speedway Auto Salvage, they had a $50 engine policy. Inside an old school bus was a 426 Hemi and a flathead. I didn't have $100.
Wish I had gotten them.

Found a real nice Blaupunkt cassette player back around 1987, worked great.

At I-44 salvage, got a complete set of Holley 6-pack carbs for a '67 (I think) Corvette. Sold them for stupid money at Car Craft Street Machine nationals.

Picked up a Smiths dual-needle oil/temp gauge cheap. Worked.

Got a tach for $5 that worked, mounted it in my '66 Nova. Sold it to a friend for his '64 Impala SS, which was what that style tach came from.

Recently, in the back of an old work truck was a SW oil pressure gauge which works! It's in my Model A parts drawer now

Jeez, lots of Snap-on tools, etc...... as well. ALWAYS LOOK IN THE BACK OF PICKUP TRUCKS!

 

30-31 A roadster bodies (several)

Various A trucks

Many 26-7 T doctors coupes

Many A 2dr sedan bodies

a whopping total of 15 Henry j's

1 409

1954 Mercury woodie.

many 62-4 impalas.

Alot of other stuff but nothing is jumping out.

 

My uncle owned a wrecking yard I bought a new 1971 454 out of a totaled caprice for 150$ then worked that off in two weeks, life was goooood the 56 belair hardtop it went in was free !

 

zactly what i was thinkin

 

last year I got A 34 ford 3 window coupe from the junkyard (no BS) it had been their for about 9 months. Lots of people kick the tires but I pulled the triger. also I add the speed stuff. this Oct it will be going down to Don Smarts shop in N.C. I'm going to try and put this baby back on the road. Jareds

 

Peace of mind.

 

71 Roadrunner,,383 Air Grabber pistol grip 4 speed,,super trac pak ,rear spoiler everything had 2 build sheets ,halloween interior ,,laying in the mud with no wheels,,,about a weeks worth of work and it was running and working hood,,something was broke in teh rear and clunked when you moved but it did drive,,and had alotta rust,,,

 

My high school car. It was a 71 Roadrunner that I had did a "little" damage to the subframe (road ended and I didn't). I sold it for a few dollars and put the money in my bug. Quite a few years later in a local pic-n-pull I came across it- sad to see it but it got me through my high school years

 

Only a couple of things, an old Cadillac air cleaner. The cool ones with the scoop on each side that Bitchin repops. The other was a 348 tri-power air cleaner, thing was the size of a round picnic table

 

Last year I went to a yard with a '69 Cougar convertible (kinda rough) - a couple of 2 door early Falcons a 75 2 door Dart and a complete running ugly Pacer AND Gremlin. I had the option of buying anything for a few hundred bucks each.

Hardly exceptional but really rare to find at the price in the confines of Dallas County these days.

 

Early on in my divorce, I was bonding with my 7-year old daughter by taking her to a wrecking yard. As we walked, I noticed a glint in the dust, and found a 24" Snap-On breaker bar. I was happy as a clam. Then my daughter looked up at me and said "Daddy, aren't you supposed to go to the police and turn that in?". D'ooh, as Homer Simpson would say. So it went to the cops, and a month later I got a call to come pick it up. Good lesson for both of us.

 

Every Snap On tool I own I have found. Weird.

 

There is a place I know in PA thats real special simply because the guy just won't sell anything. You have to be a friend of a friend to even get in. Really, its one gigantic back yard of cars. Guy was a body man in the 50', 60's and 70's, and everything that was not fixed came home with him. 60+ acres of old cars roting. I go there every so often to mow the rows in and around the cars. He smiles, and feels kinda bad that I do all that hard work for nothing, but I just tell him that its good therapy for me. The bodies are slowly decaying (poor 48' Buick Roadmaster! To name one), but at least there are a lot of Hemi engines in cars that could be saved...we'll have to see...

 

Great thread. I have to agree with trakrodstr, though. BEST, coolest thing I ever found in a junkyard was time by myself to check out really old cars without music or somebody yaking at me. The solitude was peaceful, and it seemed almost spiritual, thinking about the men who designed and built the cars, the families who NEEDED the cars for years and years of their daily lives -- every human activity. Ya just had to RESPECT these old war horses, as much (maybe MORE?) as if you were walking through a human cemetery.

ANOTHER thing I found was wisdom, in the form of actually TALKING with the people who owned, worked (often, LIVED) in the yards! THIS is/was NOT an easy living for them! So, they had interesting life views, INTERESTING STORIES to tell. I could go on and on about these memories, but I'm glad I had the nuts to go places where SOME in my high-school & college groups would have considered "risking life & limb." I never lost limb nor life, BUT I have memories my classmates don't even knew they missed.

It was a SPECIAL time in my youth (still continuing after all these decades, too!!! LOL).

 

A job.

 

But, yeh! you guys are talking hardware & shit, right? Jeez, I don't know where to start!

A 1918 Chevy, a 1936 Graham, a '40 Packard 120, '55 Packard 352 V-8, Edsels, Hudsons, Nashes, Studes (esp. Starlight coupes! & Hawks), finned DeSotos, Chryslers, Furies, Dodges, elCaminos, Imperials, Toronados, Hemis out the ass, Kaisers, Frazers, Henry Js & Crosleys, Anglias, '57 Chebbies, GMs from the '30s - '60s out the WA-ZOO.