How much profit on a part out?

Let's say you pay $500 on a parts car. How much do you need to make back? Double your money? Triple?

As much as you can.

Depends on how long it'll take to get rid of the whole car, I would say.

Say you buy a $500 car and you can double your money and get rid of everything in a week. I think that's good going.

If it takes three months, I would want to see substantially more money.

Does part out fodder largely depend on the car in question? I mean, sure I can but a '95 cavalier for pocket change and part it but the owners of said econoboxes are likely broke and there just isn't much to be made there.

OTOH I had the thought back when I owned my Allroad that the car was worth far more as parts than as a whole ($2,500 seats!!?). But the buying pool is so small it could be hard to connect with the right ones.

Where is the sweet spot for parting out?

Depends on which parts I'm keeping.

bgkast wrote: Depends on which parts I'm keeping.

X2. Usually i buy a parts car because of something i want. If it has something substantial i want then i'm willing to break even and get my goodies free. I bought a truck a couple years ago for $400. It gave my truck a complete interior, wheels, and tailgate. Sold $100, scrapped it for $300, and still have converter to scrap. I'm perfectly happy getting my parts free.

If i'm buying just to part i need to be double but aim for triple. Paid 400 for an 80 z28, ebayed $1500 or so, and left a couple hundred on the table leaving good trans and posi rear in it when i scrapped what was left for $300.

Even though I try for certain numbers, I'll snag anything I think I can make money on. That usuallt bites me in the behind unless it's something I'm very familiar with.

BTW, when we were running our salvage business, we always got more out of more valuable cars. $500 cars have parts that look like they came off $500 cars, a lot of parts ended up getting junked because they were too worn/damaged or undesirable. $5000 cars made a lot more money, both as a percentage and actual money.

Whenever I buy a parts car, I quickly sell off enough stuff to recoup my money and stop actively trying to sell parts. The rest goes into the stash. Unobtanium stays in the stash for personal use and the mundane gets sold off in bits and pieces as others need them.

I pay around 600-1500 for the Focus SVT's I've parted. I am usually able to pay for the car itself in less than two weeks and somewhat relax after that and sell stuff at a slower pace. I usually pocket around $2000-$3500 after 6 months to a year. When you tell people that you make that kind of money from a part out, they think that the money just magically poofs into your pocket. What most people aren't willing to realize is the time it takes to pull parts, advertise, box parts, going to the post office, finding odd shaped boxes, etc. It's very time and garage space/driveway consuming. Furthermore, dealing with the general public can be taxing. Low ballers, no showers, really start to wear on you after a while. I've said it before, but I'd say for every 50 people I come in contact with, 2-3 actually pay me or show up to buy parts.

Another thing is the demands of the parts of the car you are parting. The Focus SVT has upgraded EVERYTHING. Brakes, suspension, body panels, interior, wheels, engine, transmission. People want those parts for their regular Focus. When a family member found out I was doing this, he got all excited about parting out the rusty Cavalier he's had parked in his backyard for years. He really thought he was going to make $5k from it until I brought him back to reality.

Why one can make money parting out a car I myself don't feel that motivation. I have done it with cars that I owned, but for cars that I have no interest in or need for I would pass.

I parted old Capris back in the 80's when I owned one, I parted Fiestas in the 90's when I raced one. I parted Scirocco's in the '00's because again I race one.

If I had the room to spare I might part out a car like a SVT Focus or a Mustang GT, etc. but I don't have the room so I let those opportunities pass by.

I try to make my money back plus some within a week and eke out more from some of the slower moving parts over time with scrap value as pure profit on the end. Knowledge is best so you can spot the good stuff often. $500 Miata with a hardtop is a no brainer (automatic transmission is a bummer)...$50 Sunbird with repellant cat piss smell is a crap shoot.

Like the SVT mentioned earlier, upgraded models have more potential as you can upsell all the related parts too. I was pleasantly surprised when I was stuck with a friends Maxima that had been drove hard, got a bolt through the tire and rim, flipped to beat the entire body and then sat till the blocked cracked due to freezing! Buyer was elated to give me $1000 for a parts car that he could drive on the trailer...quick flip! Kicker in that deal was the 5 speed transmission.

Best are the ones that keep on giving. Saved a 67 Mustang that was headed for the scrap yard for a bit above scrap value, tripled my money on 3 gem parts. It had the engine and trans pulled for a fastback project and was rusty as hell. Another fellow showed up needing some body panels and the V8 suspension added to the kitty. Real fun was when my brother bought a 67 fastback project that needs a steering box and a box load of trim, knobs, wiring and such all still on the parts car.

Buy for scrap, profit from the gems, add more with the mundane parts and finish with scrap! Plus it is a hoot ripping a car apart with power tools and fire!! Don't overlook plastic parts or interior parts. If you sell enough parts to significantly reduce the scrap value, you are doing fine and they pay more for a load of small parts.

Bruce

Averaged out, you will make better money on a paper route or mowing lawns than parting out cars. Unless you don't consider your time as worth anything...

Take a real look at time and effort to find, haul home, dismantle, advertize and waste time with tire-kickers and you see where this is not a profitable proposition.

Where it does pay off is if you need an expensive part from a donor, say an LSx from a crashed Camaro. You might be able to recoup all of your money, but you will be doing the rest of the time consuming stuff.

Best profit I found was buying heavily modified DSMs and Mustangs and putting them back to stock, selling the car, and selling the mods separate.

The mods could be sold for 50-75% of their cost new for a popular car like a 5.0 or a DSM, and if you shopped right, stock stuff was either free or darn close to it, or you could trade mod parts for stock stuff plus cash. Also done right you had a running/driving vehicle 90% of the time so you could daily drive your part-out save for maybe a few nights and weekends to pull bigger parts.

I easily turned many $2000 modified DSMs with some small problems into a $2500 stock DSM and $3k in parts.

I've turned a profit on every parts car I've ever bought, It certainly depends on the quality of the parts car and the desire of used parts from it. just be prepared to have difficult to move, difficult to ship parts clogging up every inch of your life and then there is all the internet retards that will claim dibs on some part then never produce the cash.There are no free lunches, if you are prepared to pay the price there is money to be made.

93gsxturbo wrote: Best profit I found was buying heavily modified DSMs and Mustangs and putting them back to stock, selling the car, and selling the mods separate. The mods could be sold for 50-75% of their cost new for a popular car like a 5.0 or a DSM, and if you shopped right, stock stuff was either free or darn close to it, or you could trade mod parts for stock stuff plus cash. Also done right you had a running/driving vehicle 90% of the time so you could daily drive your part-out save for maybe a few nights and weekends to pull bigger parts. I easily turned many $2000 modified DSMs with some small problems into a $2500 stock DSM and $3k in parts.

Haha nice, I like that plan

93gsxturbo wrote: Best profit I found was buying heavily modified DSMs and Mustangs and putting them back to stock, selling the car, and selling the mods separate. The mods could be sold for 50-75% of their cost new for a popular car like a 5.0 or a DSM, and if you shopped right, stock stuff was either free or darn close to it, or you could trade mod parts for stock stuff plus cash. Also done right you had a running/driving vehicle 90% of the time so you could daily drive your part-out save for maybe a few nights and weekends to pull bigger parts. I easily turned many $2000 modified DSMs with some small problems into a $2500 stock DSM and $3k in parts.

Had an old DSM buddy in Charlotte who used to do this. Guy found that 90% of a problem'd DSM stemmed from Captain Half-Ass's hack installation. Put cars back to stock and they ran great. Since it was Charlotte he didn't have to worry about rust.

My other good friend blew the engine in his 420a Eclipse so he bought a junk Talon to pull the engine. He sold the rest of the car for more than he had in it. One thing led to another and now he operates one of the bigger DSM yards in the country. Miller Import Parts in Kannopolis, NC.

$0

That way any actual recouping of costs is merely a pleasant and unexpected bonus. So far I have tried fully parting an "engine/transmission donor" car once, and only once. It taught me that a parts car is really only worth as much as the total time it can save me. It may not be as "grassroots", but my extremely limited time for working on projects is far too valuable to waste working on not-my-projects. Sure I may still sell off the occasional useful but unnecessary bits that I end up with through my purchases, but at that point it's mostly about supporting the enthusiast community. Unless somebody wants to give me scrap value for it, the rest can essentially be thrown away for all I care.

About those return-to-stock DSMs - we once had a local Honda "tuner" car on our dyno. The more crap magic boxes we took off it, the better it ran and the more power it made. Man, were we unpopular.

I've found that I don't much have the patience for the longterm, nickel and dime partouts. I'm more of the pull everything I want in a week and sell what's left to the next sucker in line.

The Swift GTi I parted out last month drives this point home. Laid out $800 for the car, stole the G13B, sold everything else for $620 and it was only in my way for 5 days, 2 of which I actually worked on the car. That's the cheapest G13B I have ever heard of, by far. Sure, if I had taken it down to a bare shell and cleaned/itemized/listed every worthy part I could have returned a lot more of my initial investment, but there's more to life than dealing with CL flakes and non-payment eBayers.

NOHOME is right; All said and done you're probably looking at minimum wage for your time in most cases. There's exceptions to that rule, but a run of the mill commuter isn't going to make you rich overnight. I've always had much better luck on flippers rather than partouts, YMMV.

I definitely agree that parting out cars is not for the impatient. I'm coming up on the one-year mark of parting my first car and I still have a few parts lingering that just wont sell. Some need to go to the scrapper, but I can't seem to throw away a Getrag 6-speed transmission.

For me it has been a God-send. In one year I've been able to pay off a SIZABLE (in my book) credit card debt, pay for those "emergency" expenses that always seem to arise, and have enough left over to fund my automotive addiction.

That said, I've threatened to quit doing it way too many times.

I've been doing it for a lot of years; I've probably parted 25-35 Rabbits. I've made some money on every one if them and lots of it on some of them. As the market had dried up I'm not buying them anymore but other cars are just as ripe for the picking If you know the car.

I always bought them for something I wanted or needed then parted the balance. I think double your cash investment and the shell scrapped is pretty average if you pick the right cars.

A lot of good responses here. For the record I've parted cars before but lately it was strictly to get parts for a race car and sell off the rest to recoup my costs. Recently I've sold off a bunch of stuff on ebay and it has me thinking of stepping up the sales and buying some cars just to part. I'm retired, have the room and there are a bunch of rust free cars that are blown up or crashed up down here in FL that I can get cheap. And yes no cavaliers...lol

I've never used eBay, the fees are to high when you figure eBay AND Paypal. I've always used focused forums like vortex and whatnot where I was already a user.

True the fees suck and selling on forums is nice but I found ebay able to reach a lot more people and if I jack the price a little it evens out. Even if I have to relist it several times. This is for stuff under $100 after that the fees are too big to overcome. That's where the forums and clist seems to pay off.

chandlerGTi wrote:

I've never used eBay, the fees are to high when you figure eBay AND Paypal. I've always used focused forums like vortex and whatnot where I was already a user.

Buy cars to part out by weight. That Mitsubishi Montero Sport I bought to part out for $300 was so heavy that the junkyard gave me $400 by weight to scrap out. Pure profit.