Hate parting out BUT.... can I make $

I dislike parting cars, however i have noticed that there are 2 local guys who exclusively part wrx's.  One deals in what look to be insurance auction sti cars and asks big time cash for sti parts, another looks to be buying the cheap broken ones and selling reasonable.  He's currently parting one out i looked at a few years ago, i know it's been sitting broken for quite some time.  He looks to strip all mechanicals and sells the shells as rollers.  There has to be some market for that as i sold my rusty cut up roller for $900.  

So how much money could be made off a wrx that is sitting in a field with grass up to the hood that i can get for $600?  

Well, you can ALWAYS make more money doing construction work...

This is true, i do quite fine there, but I don't like to spend money from work on hobby cars.  I've exhausted my car money almost completely and would like to build it back up.  I think after the challenge I'm going to flood ebay with all the stuff in the rafters of my garage.  

I struggle with the same issue Patrick in the sense the money from the "real job" is harder to get separated into the I can spend this on hobby car stuff pile. If you read Dculbersons thread on the mr2 he's parting out it can definitely be done. He thinks he might work out to making 40-50 bucks an hour from doing it.

On a decent work day i do 40ish.  On a bad day where the job ends up being awful and costs multiple trips i get down around 20, and on the absolute best days i can do $150, but those days are usually a small quick job with only 1 or 2 per day.  svrex gets my line of work, some days there are 30 minutes, some 12 hours, and some I'm scratching my behind waiting for an inspection on one job, materials to show up for another, customer to be available for another and then all that hits at once.    

The reason i bring up wrx is because they don't pop up super cheap ever so there wouldn't be a backup of stuff needing parted, and i have one so i kinda know what i'm looking at.  I think i'm out of touch with part pricing being that i only internet at GRM and we're mostly all cheap berkeleyers.  

I'm struggling between parts or whole, as in bringing up zero rust southern cars like miatas where i can do two at a time, and selling to enthusiast types up here.  I've discovered that a $350 no rust s10 in florida ready for a v8 is still a $350 s10 in the land of road salt 1000 miles north.  

Seems to be purely based on the market for that specific car. I know a guy who funds his car hobby parting out anything old american v8.  Find a car that people are actually willing to pay decent prices for parts on. Rust free full size trucks seem to be the market in this part of ohio.

I'd definitely plan to specialize in stuff you know.  It's hit or miss around here.  I usually pick up parts cars that have something I need for a project I already own...then part out what I don't need.  I don't do it to make money.  I do it to get cheap parts and maybe a little cash to buy other parts.  I put more time into it than it's worth.  If I were to scale up I could do it to make money, but that wouldn't necessarily be a legitimate/legal business (a junkyard on the downlow seems like a recipe for stress).

Buying a few WRXs and parting one or two at a time...I can see that working well to round up project cash.  

In reply to Patrick :A friend has been doing that since the 1970's  he started out with British cars and switched to Saabs  

eventually it got too big so he found a place and rented for a while  then later bought a building.  

Hes scaled things back a bit and now it's a 1/2 day thing  noon to midnight.  

Ebay is your friend, start looking up completed sales on parts and making yourself a spreadsheet

Jaynen said:

Ebay is your friend, start looking up completed sales on parts and making yourself a spreadsheet

This right here^ I am sure on a WRX you would do just fine...