Parting out cars for fun and maybe profit: 2003 MR2 Spyder edition

Thanks for looking guys. If anybody finds some, pm me and I'll paypal ya, thanks!

I got my parts! Thanks!

In reply to java230:

And thank you!

OK, I didn't make my last Monday deadline, but as of last night the shell is stripped to bare.

I started by stripping the insides, then moved on to the suspension and motor/trans combo. There is a LOT of wiring in a modern car, and Toyota doesn't make it as easy to pull engines/etc as GM does. GM gives you a nice big plug or plugs right inside the firewall; Toyota buries them a bit. I'm a little worried about how this is going to go when I plan to reassemble the vehicle. But it was straightforward enough when not planning to put the car back together.

Pulling the motor was fun:

Note the high tech cribbing. I pulled all wiring, suspension/axle parts, drained coolant and disconnected those hoses (man that was a joy), then undid the transmission mount. After that the mounts are easy to get to with the car on the ground, so I dropped it until the engine and transmission were supported by the cribbing.

Then I undid the two side mounts and the four bolts holding the subframe on. The next step was lifting the body off the assembly; it went easily enough. There was some risk of damage from the oil dipstick hitting the body, but at this point the body was light enough for me to pick the rear end up and move it over and inch or so on the lift before continuing. That was pretty fun!

And we're clear! No more engine/trans in the car. A couple more hours zipping out bolts and I had a pretty impressive pile of parts built up:

Now comes the less fun chore of cleaning, photoing, listing, and shipping this stuff. That's all straightforward and I've been down the road a thousand times, but I need to keep moving on it more than typical since I want to clean the space back up for more fun stuff.

And the shell, which is probably going to get a sawzall job (to make it easier to load in the truck) and sold as scrap metal:

Not much left there!

Sold the rest of the brake calipers and my spare ignition coils for low, low prices. New total:

Car purchase: $1500
+Towing: $125.78
-Part sales $370
=Total $1255.78

I anticipate I'll have the first batch of items listed by this weekend. The parts sales will start in earnest after that. The challenge is to not outstrip my time availability to pack and ship the stuff.

Is there no way to save the windshield?  I tried to pull a windshield myself once.  Just once.  So I understand they are difficult to remove.  But it seems a shame to trash good glass.

DWNSHFT said:

Is there no way to save the windshield?  I tried to pull a windshield myself once.  Just once.  So I understand they are difficult to remove.  But it seems a shame to trash good glass.

This one has a crack in it, so there's no danger of trashing good glass.

Unfortunately I made the crack, prying against the plastic cowl trim when removing the wiper arms. The plastic trim flexed and I heard the telltale sound of cracking glass. Whoops!

Spoolpigeon said:

I'm picking up a 2000 spyder in a couple weeks and I know of a couple things it needs. The third brake light on the engine cover is broken, and the plastic under tray under the engine has been torn off the car and the heat shielding disappeared. If you have those still, shoot me a PM.

Pretty sure you could use a convertible top as well.

Wow...I wish I had space and knew how to weld. I envision a partial tube front end (sawzall everything off in front of the front "firewall"). Seems a shame to cut up an otherwise worthy chassis - doesnt appear to be any rot or other damage outside of the colision. But, I always have these kinds of delusions, and my lack of shop space and lack of fab skills often keep me from "writing checks my ass cant cash"

Columbus isnt that far from me. I live around the corner from Kings Island. That kind of proximity and full size pickup access makes me think naughty things when I see that bare shell...

This is a cool thread. Thanks for posting these updates!

It's yours for free if you want iT! Gotta go soon though. Enable enable

I don't know if I went over my method for listing items. I know I talked about looking at completed items on eBay. Well, I look at those and see what's sold and for how much and make a spreadsheet listing approximate values of each item. I then sort by most expensive and list in that order. It's easy to get bogged down in details and listing every little $10 trim piece or $5 bracket. I skip all that by refusing to list anything valued under $50. Your own cutoff might be different, but I've decided it's just not worth selling an item on eBay if it's worth less than $50. Now - sell locally or to a GRM member? Sure! But if I need to pull the item, take pics of it, list it on eBay, wait weeks or months for it to sell, and then lose 10% of the value to fees and ship it - it's just not worth it for a profit of maybe $3. Listing and shipping a $5 item takes just as long as listing and shipping a $500 item.

With that said, I start with a pile that looks like this:

and pick out the stuff I want to sell, one at a time, and quickly clean it and photograph it then put it in my "eBay inventory" area that currently looks like this:

Then after I've photographed and organized enough items - which is highly dependent upon my level of alertness since this all tends to happen at night after the kids have gone to bed - I list the items on eBay. I used completed and current items as pricing guidelines but sometimes will vary from them based on condition or how badly I want to get rid of the stuff.

It's working out well so far! I sold the SMT actuator and charcoal canister on eBay. I have someone coming to look at the top this weekend. I hooked another GRM guy up with some discounted parts and I have an outstanding "best offer" that I counter-offered on, on eBay. Getting close to break even and I feel like I have barely started selling stuff.

New totals:
Car purchase: $1500
+Towing: $125.78
-Part sales $1075
=Total $550.78

That's awesome that you're almost at break even already!

What are the details on that little lift? Pretty cool.

Enjoyed this thread as parting cars, specifically e36 BMWs, has been my one and only source of income since October of 2015. Started in a tiny ass one car garage, a year later moved up to a 1400sqft shop and have been quickly outgrowing that workspace. Looking for something bigger again now. In that time I lost track of all the cars I have sent to their graves, about 75 or so is my best off the head guess. I find that focusing on one make and model makes things flow more smoothly, as people know your name you do not have to try as hard to sell things. I do not strip the cars myself anymore, a buddy comes in and does it for a flat rate. That way I have more time to deal with everything else associated with doing this, as well as getting a new business started on occasionally wrenching on one of my 4 project cars. LOL Great thread, the struggle is real!

In reply to CLNSC3 :

The lift is a Dannmar Maxjax - I love it. It's perfect for my low (8') ceilings. They're on sale now for $1700 - well worth it in my opinion. Here: http://www.maxjaxusa.com/

75 cars!!! At first I read that as 75 cars since 2015 and could not imagine that volume. Can I pick your brain on a few things? How do you organize your boxes and packing materials? I have my attic but it still ends up a big messy pile of boxes that I have to sort through every time I ship something. I know there's a better way to do it. Where all do you sell your parts? I've had good luck with eBay and Craigslist but my volume is very, very low obviously. I know I need to put parts out there on forums, but hate the constant idle inquiries. (Which Craigslist suffers from, too, obviously.)

It's a fun side gig and I think it would be fun to do *very* part time in retirement.

I did it with Rabbits for almost ten years. I've had 44 good rabbits and parted dozens more. Always sold on forums, I stopped because the return to effort ratio stopped being worth it. I've thought e36 would be a good road to go down.

Sold the power antenna, one wheel, and a couple of the dash vents to a Craigslist contact. He drove his Spyder down from Cleveland to get the parts (and was going on to his sister's house, so not just for the parts).. His was the pretty emerald green with brown leather interior. Nice.

New totals:
Car purchase: $1500
+Towing: $125.78
-Part sales $1250
=Total $375.78

I have lots more to sell, with a bunch already listed on eBay. It's going well so far! I have about $2800 worth of parts listed on eBay and there's more left to go. Who knows how long that will take to sell and if they'll fetch what I'm asking but I've set most of the prices in the realistic range.

I got to drive one parts buyer's MR2 spyder. He had the 6-speed swap in his - using the same 6-speed I have out of the wrecked 2003. I think I'll be putting that transmission in my car if I can do it for a reasonable price and amount of work. It shifted great and the double overdrive was awesome. He had a nice white 2003 with a hard top. He had an awesome story about getting the hard top - usually a $2000+ piece - for $50. Creativity is key; he saw an ad for parts from a rolled spyder and in the background of one of the photos was a damaged hard top. He called the guy and asked about it and he said it was damaged in the rollover so "you wouldn't want it." He pressed him, saying he could use it for parts, so how much? $50. Sold! He managed to repair the fiberglass, repaint it, and it looks great.

I feel like a free* engine and transmission is no competition for that.

*for various definitions of free, tons of labor involved.

Enjoying the thread. No easy way to store boxes that I have found. I have a large 53" sea going storage container I put all my supplies in. Out of the way, kind of organized, and sorted by size--best that I can

Sold the steering wheel, $75. New totals:
Car purchase: $1500
+Towing: $125.78
-Part sales $1325
=Total $300.78

Parts have been selling a bit slowly on eBay but I'm patient.

To put materials storage into perspective:

Once upon a time I worked at a distribution facility. We shipped electronics, from tiny little adapters to items the size of a large cooler.

We had a dedicated team who kept our packing materials stocked. They had about 20 different sized boxes, and supplied other things like tape rolls, air pillows, rolls of bubble wrap, little baggies, packing paper etc etc etc. The packing workstations were easily the size of a large pickup truck, and that was without the vertical box storage bins over to the side with the top 8 or so box sizes all arranged in their spaces. They stored their materials in bulk in 52' trailers docked against the building. Those were replaced a few times a day with trucks full of new material as the old was used up.

Basically, packaging material storage is simply a commodity, and requires a lot of labor. The only solution to the problem is to smother it with square footage. I cant see there being a good way to do it at home IMHO. I am thinking its probably just gonna be a chore to pack up orders on demand. Sorry, I know that doesnt help.

That said, if you do come up with a good solution, I know we would all love to see it! I appreciate storage ingenuity, and I know others do here as well.

for a lot of the triumph parts i've sold I've been using a roll of construction paper - 36" wide roll. tear off sheets to wad up as packing. The roll doesn't take up as much space as peanuts or bubbles. Boxes I've scavenged as much as possible, but have to buy a few every so often. Down to the last few parts that have been slow to sell. I've recovered more than the cost of the car out of stuff I was considering pitching. Probably time to move on to the next car...

I'd be curious however this is probably what you don't want to think about is how many hours you think it took for you to get to this part where you can sell stuff. I imagine the little bit here or there to list parts/photos etc while it is work is in the minutes per item not hours?

I agree with the line of thinking that its probably best to pick something specific and stick to it because then you will also have more knowledge as to what is a good buy/what is valuable to sell etc.

"Oh this one has that axle with the LSD in it thats worth $$$$, this one has the SMT actuator which while enthusiasts hate goes bad all the time and costs $$$$ new" etc

I wonder if in choosing a specialty if being "regionally appropriate" is a factor. I knew a guy who did this with miatas and had pretty much every stock part you could imagine for a miata there in San Diego. E36's is another good one because of their use as an enthusiast car and race car and perhaps a little more unique. I'm not sure how it would go if you were parting out full size pickups for example?

In reply to Jaynen :

That's a good questiom but a tough one to answer. A lot of the work (cleaning, setting up photo area, etc) was going to happen anyway. Pulling the engine was going to happen anyway obviously but stripping the car was time consuming. I might try to estimate how many hours I have into that. Photos and listings take very little time per item and shipping is also pretty quick. My wild guess when running the numbers on a different car was about $50/hour profit. Don't know on this one yet. 

That ends up a lot better than I thought it would be

I'm also enjoying this thread since I've started dismantling an e36 328is.  You're far more organized than I am.  I have a lot to learn....