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

Used to drive a roll-off dumpster truck in KC. Found a brand new set of small block ford headers, with just a bit of scuffing where it looked like they tried to install into wrong chassis-or maybe it was one of those other SBF engines that had a different deck height, or could have been one of the OTHER SBFords that was different than all the others (can you guess my feelings on how none of the SBF stuff interchanges, lol). It still had the collector extensions pinned inside the collectors with those factory plastic buttons. -rick

 

When I had my shop at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, there was a NASCAR Dodge engine builder a few doors down - every Saturday was like a swap meet in the dumpster, various configuration oil pans, pumps, pistons, gilmer drive parts, etc.

 

Made a dump run today found some mid year Corvette bumpers.

 

Not that it was real kool but I was at a job site and the builder that I work for asked if I wanted Two 4'x4'x1/8' pieces of steel I said sure thing. I loaded them up and when I unloaded them I found out they were Brass. I sold them and had enough money to buy a full set of Classic instruments for my 32 sedan.

 

Best stuff I ever found was a shit load of NOS late 40's thru mid 50's Chevy stainless trim after some num nuts cleaned out the basement of a old Chevrolet dealer. There was even some 49,50 and 51-53 new hubcaps in original papers. This was years ago before evil bay etc., got some major bucks out of that stuff at the swap meets!!

 

I found a brand new in the wooden box set of Buick finned drum's and hub's. I found them at a dealership I used to work at. I suppose the part's manager just considered them obsolete part's taking up shelve space and scrapped them.
Gregg

 

Years ago a friend in Wy. found a complete, but disassembled, 1940 Indian Sports Scout cycle in the trunk of an old car that was in a junk yard. It even had the undamaged Corbin speedometer. I purchased the cycle from him & still have it. Wow , what a find! Greg

 

About 35 -years ago on the curb I found several 55/57 chevy 3 speed trans and one had a Hurst flat stick unit Also a lot of other chevy parts. It looked like dad and mom got rid of a sons things that were in their way. I left a front seat. .I have used that shift unit in my circle track cars for many years. Another good find was a lawn mower that fired up on the first pull.. Over the last 20 years all I find now is some scrap metal.

 

Found a 56 Schwinn at the local landfill. Just had to put air in the tires. Another time I picked up a good chainsaw, some chains and some binders. Got an old metal service station wiper blade case on the curb one day. Years ago I got a diagnostic center. Sold it at my yard sale a couple weeks later. Found 3 boxes of brand new hardwood flooring. Sold it on Craigslist for $300. Can't remember all the other stuff I've found. This doesn't include the stuff I was paid to throw out when cleaning out homes.

 

I went to the local hardware store to get some building materials as i was renovating my house. Got what i needed and went back to the car, only to relise i locked my keys in the car! Went to the skip for some strapping tape to break into my own car! Found a brand new sliding compound mitre saw with a damaged cord. Broke into my car, drove home with the saw, put a new cord on it and have been using it for years!

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i got this peddle car out of the rubbish.

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To add to my original post from page one, early Muncie 4 speeds had a threaded stud to attach the levers to, later Muncies had a through-bolt affair. Same dumpster in the same storage complex, I found an early Muncie 4 speed with the 1-2 and 3-4 shift lever threaded studs both broken off; replaced with new ones from the Chevrolet dealer, and that transmission wound up in my younger brothers 56 Chevrolet, long box, 3/4 ton truck that he had for over 20 years. When he finally scrapped out the truck, he gave the trans back. I found some hardly used SBC headers, but I had no idea what they actually fit, until I looked at the brothers truck; he had the same headers. Sold them a little while later. Found an 8mm movie projector that worked fine, and more household dishes and place settings I could find room for. Found some old ARMY uniforms, but only kept a couple of the jackets/coats.; I still have one of them, and it still fits me (this was in the later 70's, so you do the math). I pulled out a bunch of dental/denture making materials, and some of the tools used, but most of the stuff had no purpose for anything I could come up with. The manager of the storage complex finally asked me to try and be a little less obvious digging through stuff as other patrons were complaining about the guy dumpster diving. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

Hello,
When we were young, we always dropped by the local auto parts store dumpster. They usually had stuff they threw out that was scratched, but in excellent working order. That was not the best thing we found. We found, on two separate times, a complete chrome wire market basket with wheels,(dented basket) and on another day, a complete unit, but no handle. Someone had cut the curved handle off and dumped the complete lower unit. At least we had one set of handlebars for our purposes.
That was the start of our "Doodlebug" adventures. The lower end of the chrome basket made a perfect frame for a homemade doodlebug.(with a few mods...) We found two of them, but one was wrecked. There were no names of stores on them and the nearest big name store was many blocks away. We did not know how they got into the dumpsters. But, several parts from the good one and some from the wrecked one, plus parts from several old bikes made our first Doodlebug.
Of course, my mom "donated" the motor from "her" lawnmower. "Mom...the motor does not work anymore, so we need a new lawnmower...!" Off we went, on our Doodlebug adventures.
Jnaki

 

Parked round the back of a department store, had a quick perv into the bin, and there was a new -in- the- box breadmaker and toaster oven. Grabbed them and gave the oven to a mate,
and we still use the breadmaker. I drove a delivery truck for a while, and I learnt before ringing the bell in the loading dock, to check out the bins. Boxes of candy, chips, dog food, all sorts of stuff with a couple of weeks to go before the use-by date. I use to bring the truck back to the depot with the cab full of booty just about every day.

 

Not far from me was a mfgr of Harley parts, they'd flamecut entire sheets of 3/8ths steel to cut the misc brackets, pedals, stands etc and toss the rest of the sheet in the trash after the pieces were weeded out of it. I grabbed one sheet, cleaned the slag off, spray painted it satin black and hung it on the wall. It was the coolest thing to look at.
Wish I still had it.

 

Bunch of years ago in Sedona, AZ at an art store there was a wall hanger like yours for sale at $1185.95......

 

Garbage day in Whitestone , NY , found a early sixties ford factory hurst shifter with linkage....sold on e&ay for nice money....

 

Had a couple good friends who used to work for the DPW of one of the local municipalities around here, the DPW shop was located in the middle of a residential sub-division. I used to go over there once a week to have lunch with them...

One partictular day, (perhaps 20 years ago), driving thru the neighborhood on my way over there for lunch, also happened to be garbage day...as I pulled up to the corner of the side street that the shop was on, I spied a pair of old slicks in a pile of trash, out on the curb...

I pulled over, got out, pulled the slicks out of the garbage pile, and found these 16x10, 2-piece ET-III wheels mounted up! My heart started racing, and I think I was maybe in a minor state of shock, not believing what I just pulled from the trash!!!

Just to be sure that they were supposed to be in the garbage, (and because I'm such a nice guy, wink wink), I went up to the house, and knocked on the back door...three times! No one answered...I figured they were fair game!

I tossed 'em in the back of my truck, and went thru the rest of the pile, to see if maybe anything else cool was thrown out with the wheels, nothing...but I did go back on garbage day for a couple weeks just to check!

Broke 'em down at home, and even tho the slicks were as hard as cement, I still managed to sell 'em at a Detroit Fair Grounds swap meet for $40!
I glass bead blasted the wheels, and they came out beautiful!
Only 150 pairs ever made!

 

I would hit the Sears store after my night shift . For over a year they would take the broken tools and throw them away. I would take them to another store and warranty them . I made the mistake of telling a friend and he went there in the middle of the day and ask if they had anything they were throwing away. stopped that.

 

i must be digging in the wrong dumpsters , all I ever found was 2 bronze statues about a foot tall of plato and Socrates , weighed about 45lbs each , and a decent trek combination road / mountain bike someone tossed because it needed tires not a scratch in the paint , and a fold out hand truck , and a full set of T handle allen wrenches

 

Was given a heads up from the then manager of the mini storage we have a bunch of crap in that someone had been dumping old car parts in their dumpsters on site. The mngr. was a car guy too and he knew I liked old stuff. Managed to rescue this stuff. There was a big box of I/E valves with no data on them. Just a big jumbled mess. Gave those to an engine shop guy.

Mngr. said they guy had dumped a bunch of stuff the day before but the trash truck had dumped it before he had a chance to look at it. Looked like a relative had a garage had had kept everything when it was closed down. Hate to think what went to the dump.


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I was moving around 1981 and was looking for cardboard boxes behind some stores. One place was an AID Auto Store, store basically sucked, the help was useless.
Someone tossed out a large number of what had to be old stock parts. Off brand spark plugs like Prestolite, name brand oil filters, points, condensors and other stuff. I was able to match up a few things and held onto them for my stock cars. The rest I gave away to friends.

 

I worked at a check printing plant for almost thirty years. Used to visit the maintenance shop all the time and check out their scrap barrel for metal brackets etc they were tossing. When they would dismantle any machinery I would ask them to save me all the nuts and bolts. A few times even though I hadn't asked I would come back to my desk to find a box of nuts and bolts sitting on my desk. When we had a major layout change I spent quite a few hours scavenging brackets etc off of all the conveyors and machinery they had thrown in the dumpster. There's a few cars out there with some of those parts on them including my current coupe. Still have a bunch of it waiting for my next project.

 

Found out ( by accident) when the local Dealerships were getting ready for inventory, off to the dump we'd go with 2 pick-ups and my El Camino, swap meet the following week-end. One trip to the dump and we hadn't begin searching, this guy pulls in and is trying to wrestle this engine / transmission from his pick-up. We offered to help, he accepted. We backed the 2 p/u tail to tail and slid this 392 hemi in to our truck. Off to the swap-meet the next week end.

 

36" Famco stomp shear.

 

Not me, but my buddy runs across an old welder outside some shop. He makes sure indeed it is being discarded, hooks it up to his tow truck boom and takes it home. It came on a heavy duty cart. He figures he can scavenge the copper out of it.

He gets it home and his son says, does it work? Hmmm.... he wires a plug onto it, instructs his son to throw the breaker with a piece of 2 x 4 if things go bad. He does a practice weld on some scrap... perfect bead. This winds up being his go-to welder from then on. Smoothest welder I have ever used. No idea how old it was but I'd say possibly from the 1940's. Just found a picture, a Margquette.

 

Not out of a dumpster, but in the late 60's, recently out of the army, a buddy & I had a job with a local business. He had picked up a house that was going to be moved. We got the job of tearing off the front & rear porches. We got the front porch off & didn't kill ourselves. Tearing into the rear porch we plannd a bit farther ahead. We removed the skirting around the lower portion & found the remanents of an old still. Several gallon size & six 5 gallon size moon shine jugs, many feet of rolled up copper tubing in gunny sacks that fell apart when we grabbed them. It had been there for decades. We quickly covered things up & headed to my buddies place to get his 50 Chev panel. We got back & found it all gone. Our boss never said anything & we just let things slide. A week of two later as we were sitting at our favorite watering hole we mention this to our group. One of the guys speaks up & lets us know that he grew up in that house, his younger brother was driving by & spotted things. Turns out their Grandfather was a home brewer during prohibition. Our boss didn't know a thing, we each got a gallon jug as finders fee. I still have my jug.

 

Great tale. One of my neighbors years ago had settled here, he was from Kentucky. He brought the family still with him and had it set up in a shed. I went to HS with his daughter and knew about it back then, he kept it going for a long time. It was small but produced enough for him.

 

I found a mint Coke cooler on the curb,along with a little one like in the pic. Then I found this huge blue party cooler on wheels! But one of my best was a Alen distributor machine bottom cabinet that I restored,painted red to match my sandblaster.

 

I was headed to dinner and spotted a nice old coleman cooler in my neighbors truck amongst his scrap metal. Checked and he was planning to toss it. I stripped it down and painted it to match my truck, not a dent in it, not a crack in the plastic. Perfect shape old cooler, cheapest one I ever got, and the best shape