Zen in the junkyard

Lil Stampie has a half day at school so in the couple of hours I had I decided to visit the junkyard. I left the tools in the truck as this was a relaxing moment and just armed myself with 32oz of sweet tea and my phone.

First I ran across a Jaguar.  This shift knob was laying on the front seat. Few cracks but that just adds character. 

A friend of mine loves 80s Volvo's so these next few pictures were just porn for him. 

I made sure to copy his wife in the text so that she can see what really does it for him. 

Never forget im a wheel whore....

I need a seat with intergrated belts for a project and saw an Volvo XC70 so I checked out the rear seats. Yep that should work. Saw another one later on and since it was more apart I noticed that the middle can come out easily so with a little cutting and metal glueing it should work. 

By now my friend was in the afterglow of his Volvo climax so I sent him a picture of this Mercedes turbo diesel. He's been talking about swapping one into his Jeep.

At this point I was going row by row and I really wanted to get to the old car section before I ran out of time so I made a bee line to it. 

Don't think they got their asking price on this one. 

A friend of mine has a square body with the stupid safety proportioning valve that locks up preventing you from bleeding the brakes. I saw a 90 Suburban square body and noticed they did it different by then. 

Got over to the old car section and it's gone. Wtf. Asked an employee and he says they're just put in like any other car now. I start wandering back and see this 46 Plymouth coupe. 

Looking inside I see the pedal assembly sitting loose on the floor. Think that'll work great for the Model A.

So $2.24 for the shift knob and $11.24 for the pedal assembly.  Worth every penny for a couple of hours of sanity. 

Dusterbd13-michael said:

Never forget im a wheel whore....

Your level of whoreness isn't normally found in a junkyard.

OMBG.  You have no idea how badly I wish there was a yard like that within 4 hours drive of my house.  Self-service yards are extinct around here.  And even in the "we pull it for you for 4x the price", anything more than 20 years old has long since been flattened and shredded.

I love my local yards, most of the time is $5 $10 out of the door. 

In reply to Duke :

We actually have two big ones in town. The other one is bigger but this one had nicer employees.  They totally understand that I just wanted to wander around and relax for a little.

In reply to Stampie :

I was having a conversation with coworkers last week about walking junkyards. I even called it zen. One of my coworkers does it as well. Another found junkyards a horrific nightmare because he was always looking for something specific.

I described it as "there's a difference between going fishing and trying to catch fish".

I wish this forum had the little info box by everyone's screen name so we could see where they're from. I can't ever keep it all straight. That yard looks like a place I'd like to visit.

In reply to Cousin_Eddie :

I'm in Jacksonville, FL . If you're ever here I'll go with you. 

Since school is out Lil Stampie wanted to go to a junkyard. All the yards require you to be 16 so we decided to try out the shadiest you pull it yard in town. We walked in and the guy asked if Lil Stampie was my son. "Yep." Then he asked Lil Stampie if he was 16 followed quickly with "You look close enough just say yes."  Paid our entry fee and walked in. 

This is the same yard I got the brake pedal for the K30. There's no organization and nothing is up on blocks. This is typical of how it looks.

We wondered to the back and found an old abandoned house.

Pretty cool Easy Rider magazine pages as wall paper.

We were looking for square body stuff and only saw a few of them. One was in the middle of a lake, one was missing the engine/trans we needed bolts from and the last one was on top of a Cadillac SUV.  We couldn't get to the bolts but it had an oil cooler. Started to pull it and once I got the oil line off realized it had metal in the oil. Shame that someone junked a decent square body because of a blown 350. Oh well ended up not getting anything but at least Lil Stampie got to visit a junkyard. 

In reply to Stampie :

lil' Stampie just found his 16yo porn stash. 

_ said:

In reply to Stampie :

lil' Stampie just found his 16yo porn stash 

But seriously, I don't think I could be good friends with anyone who doesn't love junkyards.

In reply to Stampie :

You happen to notice any NA Miata stuff? I'm within hollerin' distance. I'd bring lunch for us!

Old school junkyards are awesome, but disappearing fast.  We still have a few pick-n-pull yards in the area, with Chesterfield Auto Parts being my most frequent port of call.

https://chesterfieldauto.com/

In reply to Shadeux :

Go pull it had an NA last time I was there. What do you need?

In reply to Stampie :

I looked up Go Pull It - Holy moly what a place! I could spend hours there.

Mostly I'm looking for the headlight bucket assembly, both left and right. I have the exterior covers, just want the internal parts minus the motors. I have something like this now, and I want to go back to original.

In reply to Shadeux :

For a second I considered trading you but I'd want to build custom buckets and that's leave me without headlights in the meanwhile. Let me know if you want to go. I could spare a couple of hours next Friday morning or more that Saturday..

In reply to Duke :

There's a Crazy Ray's down in joppatowne on 40 in Harford county. It's a short drive from Aberdeen. If you ever want to go, let me know. 

$2.24 for a shift knob.   I think LKQ near me would try to jack me up for $25.

But I am laughing at the core price on the master cylinder.  

I've always found the anti-Zen in a junkyard: the wreck. Not just a wreck, but one that someone was definitely hurt in. I've come upon dried blood, ect...but the worst was one that had a smashed windshield...from the inside. There were tufts of hair and skin in the windshield.  Noped the hell away form that even though it had some parts I wanted. Those parts are cursed, and I wouldn't have anything to do with it. Sorry to bring this down, but I never forgot the eery feeling I got from that car, and hoped that person was OK.

In reply to Appleseed :

The worse I've seen was the C10 I got the brake pedal from. Definitely a bad accident but survivable. I run up on a CTS once that had biohazard written on the windows. Peak inside showed it was probably a mold issue. 

In reply to Appleseed :

Our local pick n pull won't even put the bio cars out. Blood, hair, any of that - it goes straight to the crusher.