Allan R

Today I was at the boneyard as it was one of the very nice days here where it wasn't snowing or raining. Yeah, you read that right. Weather in the great white north has been a living hell on the west side of the country. Sorta like Ma Nature is having cramps or something.

I had promised one of our members that I'd check out an 84 Ninety Eight Regency Brougham as he was looking for the B pillar Electro-luminescent lights that have that cool factor in an upper end car. There were 2 such beasts in the boneyard last week but one of them went to the crusher on Sunday. So I couldn't get anything off it and to be honest it looked like the better car of the 2. Anywho, fast forward to today. First stop in the yard was row 70 which is a spit from the yard entrance. Second car in was the 98. So here's one of my beefs - If a DIYer doesn't have the right tools to do the job GO GET THEM. The EL trim covers come off by undoing an allen screw hidden at the bottom of the brushed stainless plate. The one on the drivers side was ok, but the one on the passenger side?? Some moron must have lost the little set screw, so rather than go get one, they bolted the EL plate cover to the B pillar with 2 rusty Robertson screws. Both EL lights were broken so that was a bust.

Next I get to a 77 Cutlass Salon Coupe. This was a nice car at one time. It had AC, PS, Tilt , PB, PW, Power bucket drivers seat, Rallye pac gauges and some other things that likely were trim options but I'm not sure about their RPOs. The car had a 350/350 setup which was still largely intact except for the carb. So here's my second beef: What are the 3 favorite tools for moron parts seekers?

1. A BFH
2. A pair of wire cutters
3. A pry bar

Everything on this car had been either beat to death with a hammer or pry bar and all the wiring had been cut. Who does that? You'd think that someone who was into these cars would take the right tools and get the parts out the way I do - carefully and by planning/studying how to remove components without damaging them. Nooooo, ahhahahahahahaha that's a dream world I live in. Up here these cars don't come into the yard all that often, so when I see hacks like the ones I saw today it frustrates me no end. Ok, I'm done my rant.

BTW - I did learn how to take the dash out of a Hyundai Sonata without damaging it, and reinstall it so some moron could come along with their BFH, wire cutters and pry bar to do their rendition of parts dismantling 101.

2blu442

Who knows, it could also be a yard worker who doesn't want to walk back to the shop for the right tools. Back in the late 1980's I purchased a set of 442 grills from a 1972. The yard wanted to pull them for me. Yes... he broke off all the tabs doing it. I think many people just see these cars as scrap metal. Sad though, I agree with you its painful to see good parts thrashed.

Yellowstatue

I bought a '68 rear bumper and the fella used a cutting torch on the chrome bolt head. Cheesh!

deadeyejedi

i agree 100 per cent allan ! all the salvage yards in my neck of the woods are gone ,when they were operating they wouldn't let you go into the yard and get your own parts .had a salvage yard owner in business for 40 years insist that all th350 transmission dust covers were the same .took him three tries to get it right.and it was clear they were not careful removing it !!

Koda

If everyone was smart, we wouldn't be so superior.

edzolz

Your lucky to have a salvage yard at all. The EPA regs have shut down a lot of the local yards. The best around here had lots of older cars (40's, 50's, and up) shut down and now is just a crush yard. He buys from the auctions and takes the straight to his yard and crushes them.

Allan R

Nope, that's not the case John. This yard is strictly self service (Pick n Pull). We have other local yards that specialize in trucks and late model cars. Those guys actually do a good job dismantling cars. I guess the staff they employ have either been well trained or have the experience dealing with all the tools needed. Of course with them, time is money so they've already determined which parts will be pulled and then the car goes to the crusher. Probably lots of parts that would cost less get trashed, which is likely why the brands keep a large inventory of parts at higher prices. A multi function switch for my 2010 Malibu is 14.00 at Pick n Pull. At the dealer it retails for close to 65.00. Either way, it's a crap shoot since the parts nowadays are made offshore. Some last and some don't.

Human

I may be the only person who does this, but I do try to carefully remove parts out of consideration for the next person who might need something I've removed to get to something I need. That said, I have to admit that I do cut wires when I remove electrical parts from a car so that I can keep both sides of the connector on the off chance I'll need it, which has come in handy on occasion. In one instance I harvested just the electrical connector from a power seat on a Buick LeSabre--for which the yard didn't even charge me--so I could fabricate a plug-n-play patch cable to add a power seat to the passenger side of a Pontiac Bonneville I had. I attached both ends of the connector in parallel on one end of the cable so that I could unplug the connector under the driver's seat, plug the cable in between, and run it to the passenger side. It made for a very neat, professional looking installation of which I was justly proud.

For me, one of the bonuses of pulling parts myself is that I get to practice and make my mistakes on dead 'cardavers' before I do the operation on my own car. And yeah, the people running the yards really don't give a rip what you do to the cars. I once wanted to get a taillight lens off of an Olds Eighty-Eight but the trunk lid was closed and no keys were with the car, so I asked one of the staff if he could suggest a way to get into it without unnecessarily destroying things that others might need and he just shrugged and said "Do it any way you can," so I found a tire iron in the trunk of a nearby car and proceeded to destroy a perfectly good trunk lid. But what the hell? It was going to be 'crusher chow' shortly anyway, right?