My wife and I are among the few remaining newspaper readers.
She peruses the ‘Living’ section, scouring every square inch for coupons. I take pride in reading articles from all the sections and, after that brief exercise is done, I just look for car deals that are loaded with gotchas and thirteen lines of small print.
Sometimes my eyes will wander around to cheap tires or the latest headlight cleaning shtick. I despise cheap tires and God knows, cleaning Chrysler headlights is far from my list of to-do’s these days. But finding a great deal? That’s what I live for. At least when it comes to eliminating any future purchases.
For those of you seeking the frugal nirvana I have two heartfelt words for ya. Screw retail.
I’ve found perfectly good tires at thrift stores, on Craigslist, and even the local community board. Motor oil? Freecycle has enabled me to get dozens of quarts for . . . well . . . free.
Then you have the treasure troves of everything automotive. Junkyards and your mechanic’s mini boneyard.
Junkyards are always the obvious place for a long list of hardware. Engines, trannies, body and trim parts. You can even have aftermarket upgrades and reincarnated interiors if you look hard enough. However what has truly amazed me over the years is that wearable items can be truly had for a song.
Want some near-new tires? Ask. Of course you may end up with a perfect set of three but ask anyhow.
Has a car come in with good seats? Ask again. A lot of yards will try to remarket seats but there are many who will let you have it for cheap to free if you’re buying a bunch of stuff or are a regular.
Then there is what I consider to be the true Shangri-La.
Audio systems. It just amazes me that these things are seldom if ever removed from the vehicle. Perhaps it’s an Atlanta thing. I don’t know. But for every wore out car that I ignore with crappy aftermarket wheels that aren’t worth a damn, I discover stereo systems that are truly expensive works of automotive art.
I recently put one in an uber-restored 1977 Mercedes 350 SE that I purchased for a mere $250 a few years ago. It received the best Alpine system I could find for the modern time to compensate for the scent of the horsehair filled seats.
Ipod compatible? Check. USB connectivity? You betcha. XM? Sirius? Yeah, but who cares.
How much? Free from an impound auction. One of my friends was in the crushing business and he cared as much about the radio as I care about the Atlanta Braves.
One more thing. For those without the free time or inquisitive nature, your local mechanic may also be a good resource. Early in my career I found many of my favorite future shopping denizens from an independent repair shop. That eventually lead to more new sources and before I knew it, I conquered another retail myth. Cars can be cheap to own if you are crafty enough.
Now if only I could manage an afternoon at the mall without feeling like a complete weirdo. And speaking of weirdos… what about you? Has there been an automotive moment in your life when you were able to give a big raspberry or a flippity bird to a retail automotive establishment? I’m not just talking about performing your own oil changes. I want the good stuff. The tires you got for less than the modern day cost of a rotate and balance. Or the $100 junkyard part that would have normally cost $1800 at the dealer.
I want to hear the blood, the gore, and most of all, the cha-ching. So feel free to share.
I used to buy used tires at a neighborhood tire shop (Radial Tire, Silver Spring, MD) for my wife’s Datsun B 210. Five bucks a pop. Why put good tires on a B 210? Until one day my wife threatened to kill me unless I bought her new tires. I asked her why all the vitriol? She said drive the piece of crap. I did. It was scary. She got new tires.
We tried that, too.
Once.
As a broke college student, I did the same thing. About 1980 or so I went to a tire store and got a set of four bias ply whitewalls for my 71 Scamp for $40, mounted and balanced. About a year later, I went back and the store had a set of four radials for $60. One of the few purchases of automotive things that really changed my life.
I used to accept the “car is worthless, get cheap tires” calculus. A sign of adulthood is when you let the value of you and your passengers into the equation. My old Geo was expendable. The offspring are not. Rocket science!
I’ll never buy used tires.
No point in having a sports car with crappy tires. Too dangerous on the motorcycle. Wife has trouble driving in snow/ice even with good/all-season.
I could imagine in warmer climates with beater cars it might be OK….
Rear cab glass in my ’95 F-150, which was busted out by a roof truss in the straight wind/tornado event we had back in the spring that took out half my machine shed.
Called the glass place, who quoted $350, installed. Went to the U-pull with a box cutter and ten minutes later walked out with a $40 piece from one of their three trucks of that vintage. 40 sweaty minutes after getting home, son number two and I had it in all by ourselves.
This is a good post and one that got me thinking. In my area there is a chain of junk yards named Crazy Rays. it is a pick it pull it place. It costs a $1 to get in but prices are cheap and they have a price list so you know what the cost of the item you are looking for costs before hand. I have saved tons of money pulling and fixing my own stuff.
I will not however buy used tires, I saw enough carnage due to used tires that a customer tried to save a few bucks buying used and wound up with a blow out and ruined fenders and other car body parts. When i need tires I buy brand new
As for headlight cleaner. I found colgate toothpaste, a few rags and a big pitcher of water works. I removed the yellowing from my Volvo 240 headlights that way
For headlights, I mix some baking soda and water in a small bowl and use that as a polish. It was the best treatment yet for the headlights on my 93 Crown Vic, which seem to need polishing at least once a year.
I can answer yes to most of these things but that is cheating, as we are in the towing bizz with an unintended foray into scrapers. The best thing that I truly love to get for free are name brand tires. I always seem to have a coupla extra set of summers and winters and usually all are in their own wheels so I just rebalance them to make sure they are true. A friend of mine drives an old chev pickup and he even takes the gas that we get from the junkers. All the fluid minus the coolent goes into the tank of the waste oil furnace which provides the shop near as possible free heat.
I’ve scored my share of cars and parts on the cheap. Most notable was a completely rebuilt auto trans for $250. I’ve picked up at least 5 cars for just the cost of title transfer because problems were misdiagnosed and the owners wanted to ditch them fast.
Recently I acquired a wheel balancer and tire changer on the cheap. I won’t have to waste any more time waiting for tire services to be performed on uncalibrated and beat to hell equipment. Take that retail tire store!
I’ve been looking hard for an old Coats tire machine but haven’t stumbled across one yet — a great investment when you have lots of older cars and hoard parts as I do.
Most tire guys are real rough on wheels & rims. It irks me the way they would throw my aluminum, chrome, or painted rims over the lip of the tire machine when they would mount tires, always scratching them and sometimes gouging them in the process. I’m a jerk and watch them now.
I had a very nice ’71 Riviera with the chrome road wheels & still cringe when I remember the tire monkey destroying one of my “R” center caps when he “removed it” by punching it out from the backside with a hammer handle..it broke both the plastic insert and the staked in retaining ring.
I had to replace a tail light on my 2005 Camry, and I found one in a salvage yard. The total price with tax was $112. However, their invoice printer was not connected to their credit card processor, so they had to enter it in manually–which they did as $12. I signed and didn’t give it a close look until after I left.
holy crap…you got a good deal but…
you could have bought a brand new tail light for $60.00 plus shipping.
Pleae folks..make sure you check the prices online for new parts before you buy something from the salvage yard for more money!
I love that cartoon. We subscribe to two print daily newspapers. Our local just said they’re going to cut back to four home-delivered print editions a week, and we’ll just love their new web site. Right.
I’m a lifelong computer nerd, and read newspaper websites plenty. But there’s nothing like a fresh broadsheet daily in the morning. It’s all there at a glance and it’s a whole lot bigger than any computer screen.
Plus they’re the ones who do the real reporting, like your cartoon says.
I am another who appreciates the tactile experience of reading a big old paper paper. Home delivery of the Indianapolis Star, and office delivery of the Wall Street Journal. But I miss the really, really big old newspapers that were the standard size before a couple of shrinkings. If you see someone reading a paper in an old movie or TV show from the 80s or before, notice how much bigger the old newspapers were.
Another die-hard newspaper junkie. Go thru the entire Richmond Times-Dispatch, and first pass glance at the Wall Street Journal at breakfast, finish reading the Journal over dinner.
I refuse to count on any other source for real news. Haven’t watched a television news broadcast in decades (vas is dis Foxnews?), radio is limited to when I use the car for commuting, anything internet is taken for entertainment – not real news.
The Detroit Free Press went that way 4-5 years ago. Three home-delivered print editions, the rest are online. I rarely if ever read the online version. I get a steep educators discount on the New York Times so I get that M-F to supplement.
I too miss the old “big” newspapers. The Free Press went small about 10 years ago, and the Times followed suit shortly after, maybe 2 years later. My wife listens to NPR in the car all the time, I can do it at home but I like music in the car.
I’m a regular at the 5 or so self service junkyards in a 30 mile radius and over the years I’ve scored some real gems. Many of which I’ve sold for profit, but most funneled right back onto the street by way of my car. I’ve bought Engines, transmissions, seats, wiring harnesses, computers, ect. ect. ect.
Certain parts I won’t mess with used. Rubber bushings, ball joints and brake components is generally where I draw my line. Tires I’ll do if they’re attached to wheels I can use as well(obviously if they’re not dry rotted and have a lot of tread). If I’m going on a road trip or something having a super cheap beater set can come in handy.
Got an automatic accessorybelt tensioner for my Citroen new $584 + tax , $ 70 in perfect condition.
The garbage man comes every Monday morning in my neighborhood. Sometimes I drive around the back streets on Sunday evenings to see what treasures are being kicked to the curb. I’ve found brand new playground equipment for my daughter this way. This is where some of my best lawn equipment has come from too. One time, I found a complete set (4) of very good tires by the curb that had come off the guy’s Silverado who had apparently decided to go with bigger ones on his own truck. They were Continentals! Still on my buddy’s ’00 Silverado after something like 40k miles! Also, I just replaced the starter on my own car. The dealer said the part would cost $370 + tax. Price from Big Al’s Pick and Pull? $25 including the core charge. That comes out to $20 to fix my car, a Volvo! One man’s junk…
When I was in law school, I took some trash to my apartment complex trash area, and saw that someone had set out an old vacuum cleaner. I mean old, like no newer than the early 50s. We didn’t have a vacuum, so I took it home, plugged it in and it worked. It needed a belt and a light and it worked just fine. I used it until I got married. Mrs. JPC looked at it and said “I think we are getting a new vacuum.”
Our toaster in the kitchen is a vintage 1950s one I got at goodwill for $5. Works better than the “new” one.
Yeah, the new toasters suck. They break after a year – my last one from Wal-Mart would either only release the toast when I pulled the plug or would stay on after doing a half-eject and I’d have to pull the plug anyhow. The toast would either be burned or underdone when it “worked” before. I don’t buy electronics (or clothes or produce) from that store anymore.
This edition of Kurbside Kitchen bought to you courtesy of Durabrand. Durabrand available exclusively at Wal-Mart. Visit your local Wally World today!
On sale now!
I have a newer toaster and it has a circut board in it, in a TOASTER, everytime I see that, it just bothers me, toasters worked fine for years without the need for a circut board.
My GE deluxe Toast-R-Oven has worked fine for more than 35 years and I use it daily. They definitely don’t build ’em like they used to…
I did the same thing with an old Hoover when I was in school, and like you my wife hated the thing. She was equally unimpressed when the replacement vacuum that we got as a wedding present was another upright type. 🙂
At some point I needed a new alarm clock. I found a cool looking one at the thrift store, an old Radio Shack model. Tested it briefly before I bought it, but when I got home I discovered that two of the buttons weren’t working. I took it apart and inside were the same type of buttons that I had bought for an electronics project and I had some spare ones. Desoldered the old ones and installed the new ones. Fixed!
My best non-automotive money saver story involves our furnace. Modern high-efficiency gas furnaces are computer controlled. Ours stopped working. The code flashing from the computer said a blower motor wasn’t spooling-up. Furnace repair guy quoted $1000 to replace the blower motor assembly. I investigated and found something corrosive had spilled on the motor driver circuit board, presumably during manufacture, and it eventually dissolved a couple of traces. I cleaned-up the traces and bridged across the breaks with some wire soldered on. All fixed!
My dad found electronic BBQ igniter modules for cheap somewhere, so be bought a couple and gave me one. It didn’t come with the wires and spark electrode that connects near the burner. Local BBQ store wanted too much for one, so I drilled a hole in the bottom of the BBQ and threaded it for a spark plug, which I wired-up to the igniter module. Fixed! I later converted our BBQ from propane to natural gas myself as well.
Back in high school, I rear ended another car in my 67 Ford convertible. The hit mangled the grille and bent the front edge of the hood under. I got a couple of repair estimates, and they were over $500, which was very good money in the late 70s. I went to my favorite junkyard, and found that someone had just driven in a 67 Ford in the very same color as mine, with the prettiest, shiniest hood you ever saw. “I’ll take that one.” Hood and grille cost me about $40, as I recall. All fixed.
I still read the paper, mainly the automotive, current affairs/news (occasionally), and comics sections (anyone else read those anymore?). Unfortunately, the family paper only comes on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays.
Many years ago, around 1970-71, I could get nearly new tires for the cost of getting them mounted. My step-mother’s brother-in-law was the Firestone distributor for our town and had stacks of nearly new tires that had been taken off of new Cadillacs & Buicks. If you are old enough to remember this era then you may remember that in the late sixties most car companies (GM may have been the first) started fitting OEM tires that were only two plies but were somehow four ply rated. Many of the older customers who purchased upmarket cars didn’t care for this and would buy “real” tires after 5000 miles of use. These tires still had quite a bit of tread left and getting them essentially for nothing was a boon to me. I was a poor college student and my car (63 Belvedere with a 361) could burn through a set of rear tires in no time.
My junk yard hunting is on a different level: Bicycles. Over the past five years I’ve been running a hobby/business, specializing in restoring antique bicycles but also fix and flipping more modern (1970’s and up) bikes. Which are then sold to the college students for transportation, which keeps my bicycle and motorcycle addictions funded. Once again, it’s amazing what people throw out . . . . . and most of it is just dirty and neglected.
The one joy of fixing up old bicycles is that; aside from tires, tubes, and handlebar tape; its a 99% chance you’re not going to have to replace anything. Its very rare to have a bicycle with worn out parts.
I did a bunch (about 14K miles in one year) a couple of decades ago, but if you paid attention and got some minimal tools, you could replace most anything that died on a bike. I’d wear out various sprockets on my rear cluster, to the point where it was worth it to buy a few gears and fix the cluster. (Never tried to fix the freewheel–road dust and grit made them too hard to disassemble.) Did have to spend a few bucks when I started building my own wheels, but things like hubs last a long time.
We gave up on the Klamath Falls newspaper a year ago. AP and McClatchy feeds that I could get online, and local stories with rather slanted coverage. It’s always bad when you know a story well and then see the writeup in the paper. Once the grocery store put its coupon flyer at the store, we stopped the Sunday paper for good.
When I got my first car, a 1984 VW Rabbit, the (black plastic) grille was pretty smashed. I got out some side-cutters and cut out all except the outer frame, which was still good. My dad was pissed, going on about how there was nothing to protect the rad from a stone hit, blah blah blah, but I already had a plan.
I measured the opening, then went to the department store with my measuring tape and checked out the laundry baskets. I bought a suitable one, cut the sides out of it, and fit them into the grille opening. Then I removed them, painted them dark gunmetal, reinstalled them, and put a pop-rivet in the middle to hold them together. Voila, new grille!
I later replaced the rotted out hatch with a junkyard piece. This was also an upgrade as the replacement had a wiper and washer, which I hooked-up. The receiver for the drivers’ seatbelt latch broke at some point. I was driving down the road and spotted a house with a couple Rabbits in the yard. I stopped and bought a replacement. I had my tools in the trunk so I could remove it from the donor and install it in my car on the spot.
I wanna see a photo of that!
Unfortunately, the majority of the independent junk yards (or “automotive recycling centers”) around Atlanta have gone out of business or become computerized, where you tell them what part you want at the counter, they check the computer, and you may never get to the yard, as the part will have been pulled, bar coded, and stored for sale along with higher pricing. Pull-A-Part has a $2 entry fee, but you can walk & look to your hearts delight. The down side is, that the cars are rotated to the crusher, so it is seldom that you’ll find any 60’s-70’s iron. I remember great yards like Bell Brothers, Crane’s, Dogman’s, and others whose names I’ve forgotten. Places where you would find intact vehicles that had been in place so long, that small trees would be growing in empty engine compartments! I scored a complete Rallye instrument cluster (speedo/tach/full gauges) for my ’74 Challenger for $15! I also got the scooped hood by swapping out my flat hood for it and $10 so they could have a complete front clip for sale!! My biggest score, however was a complete ’73 340 Challenger for $600, which I still own!! Oh, the memories; Boy, how I miss those adventures!!! 🙂
I have an older friend of mine that reached driving age in the late 70’s, he’s told me the tales of similar things……GTO’s and 442’s in junkyards, just there for the picking, he bought and entire 400/4 speed combo out of a 70 GTO for $100 I think, it was a Ram Air car too…….but the Ram Air was damaged when they drop another car on the hood.
*sigh* those were the days… My greatest junkyard score was in Birmingham, AL… After putting in a lock cylinder, battery, gas, and a lot of transmission fluid, I drove this ’73 GTO out of a yard for $650.
My late Mom’s 87 Deville needed a new trunk lid module due to too many folks slamming the thing closed vs. letting the thing contact and bring down the trunk lid normally (I can’t understand why anyone needs a power trunk lid but it was there and broken when the ’87 was gifted to me). The Dealer quote was effenmemorable so I went to a local pick-n-pull. I couldn’t find her exact year as this was a common problem so I bought one from a Caddy that was close for $10 hoping it would fit. It didn’t. I took the old module apart and replaced the fried motor & parts with all the stuff from the one I’d just bought…they fit perfectly inside the differently shaped housing! Score! and I had insta-cred from my wife for doing the R&R. It was noisier but worked like a charm for the rest of the time I had it.
I admit it– I buy used tires. This winter, both our relatively new cars will roll on used Michelins and Blizzaks, mounted on used wheels, too. Too bad I can’t credit the newspaper for these deals, but they were found via Craigslist. In Denver, most every serious motorist keeps two sets of tires, for summer and winter. When they trade cars, the out-of-season set usually becomes obsolete, and it’s sold for half list price or less, even if used only one season.
These deals might not have been available in Atlanta, but living in snow country does have its benefits.
Yep, I found the winter tires and genuine Honda steel wheels for my wife’s 2006 CR-V online, and the seller lived only 10 minutes drive from our house! He bought the wheels and tires from the Honda dealer, then traded his CR-V after only using them for one winter. The dealer wasn’t going to give him anything for them, so he kept them to sell privately.
I got a large chip in the windshield of my Peugeot 504. Every shop in the area said replacement windshields were non-existent and wanted $80+ to fix the chip, more if insurance covered it. Called a local place in SF, guy said he couldn’t get the windshield either but that they fixed chips for free between 1 and 5P weekdays. Free! OK! He fixed it on the spot in maybe 15 minutes and saved me from getting a windshield-ruining crack, for nothing. Good business model too because if I get a windshield crack in another insured car, I’ll let him do the work.
Self serve boneyards specialize in cars worh $500-3000. Whatever the working class is driving at the time. Nowadays its 1990s-early 2000’s beaters/wrecks.
I like to see what are the newest cars [2005 compacts are coming in] to hit ‘beaterville’ and if any ‘estate sale’ oldies come in. Once local yard had a worn out ’72 Toronado, for example.
Most likely are not going to see classic 60s Pony cars or Tri 5 Chevys. Also, late model wrecks worth over $5000 will go to high end yards, so that cars/parts aren’t vandalized.
We still get a newspaper, FWIW. The Cincinnati Enquirer isn’t what it used to be.
A buddy out in Phoenix has an edition from the CIVIL WAR, believe-it-or-not, and it’s HUGE! Pretty funny compared to the scratch sheet the Enquirer is now.
I don’t bother with any ads unless I’m looking for something like a new TV or some other gadget. Car ads? Nope. Unless I’m in the market – then I go to the internet. probably an age thing – I’m trying to cut everything to the bone. Too busy for many distractions!
Our favorite part of the paper? The funnies, especially “Red & Rover” and “Pearls Before Swine”. Also the cryptoquip and word-of-the-day – Wifey and I have daily contests on these. Once in a great while I’ll mess with a crossword, but she likes the Sudoku.
As to scoring a big buy and skipping retail, hmmm… I don’t recall the last time that happened… perhaps kit-bashing our old LeBaron convertible back window mechanisms that broke and I fixed out of junk I found in the toolbox. Saved a ton on that! Never failed as long as I owned the car.
I used to get some good deals with junkyard parts back in the day but lately that seems to have gone away, at least around here. Nothing at all like “Desert Valley Auto Parts” on Discovery!
All of the junkyards are pretty tightly regulated and they catalog, price and ebay everything that’s worth anything, yes, even audio systems and especially stock audio systems and stock seats/interiors. I am also somewhat of a perfectionist so admittedly I am not looking for the cheapest possible fix, usually I want something that will improve the appearance or, in case of mechanical components, will not break 3 months later. I guess if I had a business of fixing up old cars to sell, or just drove a junker than I wanted to keep running as cheaply as possible then I would put more effort into it, but as it is there will not be many good parts for any of my cars just sitting in a lot getting rained on and baked in the sun for months.
We just moved and there is supposedly a pretty good U-Pull-It lot around here so someday I will check it out, see what I can find for our old CRV.
If you like used tires, you may be riding on mine. I always buy new ones when old ones still have a bit of useful tread. Here in Illinois, there is a $5 per tire disposal fee which adds $20 to the bill. I take my old ones down the road to “Fix O Flat” and get at least $5 for each. It’s like a $40 swing in my favor. After savoring my improved financial state for an hour or so, I head on down to the local casino and take 4 pulls on the $10 slots. Once I won enough money to pay for two sets of tires and the other times, I enjoyed a few cups of complimentary coffee. I haven’t had to buy tires in seven years but the Prius is at 32,000 miles, and I’m starting to notice a bit of an itch. New rubber for next winter may be on the agenda.
It’s been 30 years now so I guess I can come clean about it.
A rock got kicked up by a passing vehicle and cracked my windshield. I didn’t have comprehensive insurance that covered my windshield. So, I saw a gravel truck flying down the road illegally w/o a tarp. So I followed him to his next stop and yelled at him that he threw a rock that cracked my windshield. He gave me his paperwork and his insurance company paid for it. Sleazy? Yah, but somebody’s insurance company was supposed to pay for it and he didn’t have a tarp. Perverted justice I suppose…
Since you are providing the forum I will come clean. My name is Stephen and I recently suffered from a horrific case of SS…..”Severe Stupidity”. It was a beautiful New England sunny Sunday and I was about to head down to the Flower Garden Bakery for a much deserved large coffee and large chocolate donut…I slid into my future curbside classic…2010 Civic Coupe..hit the garage button…shifted into reverse and started backing out of the garage day dreaming about how good that donut was going to taste when my better half walks into the garage and with one screeching sentance of “Stop at the store and get some milk”…I lost my concentration…turned the wheel, heard a blood chilling crinkle and watched with horror as the front clip hit the garage floor. If the humiliation of hitting the side of the house in a garage I backed out of a million times was not enough..my ever loving spouse took one look at the carnage and said..”Well now look what you done”…it took all my courage not to shift into drive and hit the gas.
Luckily living in a small New England town..everyone knows everybody…so I call “Bobby” who is the manager of our local Chevrolet dealer Body Shop and told him my problem….Bob replied bring it down and let me see what I can do. So I pick up the clip and fit it in the back seat and down to the shop I go. Bobby walks around the car..careful not to step on my humiliation…said well Steve you got a clean break…but you snapped the tabs off so usually that means we have to order another one from Honda at $1800.00….BUT…give me a day or two and I’ll call you. So two days later I call and Bobby says…well don’t ask me how we did it but we “bolted” the clip back on–replaced the park lights… buffed out the white paint and she’s as good as new. Didn’t even have to spot spray. What did you do I ask in complete wonder…well one of the guys drags part time and he fussed with it and bolted the clip to the frame, made a few other “adjustments”…and let’s just say the next time this happens the house will not be standing….and that will be $700..I fought back the tears of joy as I handed over my credit card. I feel much better now that the shame has been shared. Thank you for listening.
Reminds me of the time I backed the front passenger corner of my pickup into a tree, damaging the corner light and ripping off the wide rubber rub strip on the bumper. I already had a replacement turn signal light housing because I had bought a set of front lights from online classifieds to replace my badly fogged headlights a year before. I reinstalled the rub strip on the bumper by drilling holes where the (now broken) plastic clips used to be and using small stainless screws, with large washers on the backside of the bumper.
I’m always on the lookout for old cars in people’s yards. Once I spotted a Dodge pickup of the same vintage as mine in someone’s backyard. I stopped to inquire about it. The owner was going to scrap it shortly, so I grabbed a whole pile of stuff off him for $50, mostly interior electrical switchgear. I took the HVAC controls, power window and lock switches, complete power mirror assemblies, pull-out cupholders, speakers from the door panels (one of mine was shot), headlight switch, and a few other things. I’ve already had to use a couple of the parts, so I’m pretty sure I’ll get my money’s worth out of the deal.
I replaced a dented front fender on my wife’s 2001 Civic before we sold it. Somebody had backed into her in a parking lot (hit and run). I bought a fender from the wreckers, paid cash at a bodyshop to have it painted the correct colour, and installed it on the car myself. Looked as good as new.
When I had my 63 Cadillac the fall I started college, a friend’s dad had a rental property with a 63 deVille that had been moldering in the driveway for 7 or 8 years. I asked if I could buy a couple of parts off of it, and his reply was get it out of here and you can have the whole car. For the cost of a tow bar and a Saturday I had a parts car for free. A little country garage let me dump it in its little junkyard out back for free, so long as I would let them sell parts off of it if the need arose. I was fine with that deal. As it turns out, I only got a couple of parts off it. Had I tried to make money off of the deal, I probably could have. Instead, my interests led elsewhere, and I have no idea whatever became of the parts car.
I am a consumate cheap-ass and will buy just about anything used. Appliances, computers, tires, building materials, pets, furniture; hell, even a couple of mattresses. I have never purchased a new computer and just recently fixed my 60 year old stove with new-old-stock burners and switches that I found on ebay. Today I’ll tackle the bad freezer door gasket on my 24 year old fridge. The vacuum that I bought for $20 on craigslist five years ago is still going strong, though the next time the belt breaks it’s done for. See, about 3 years ago the brush roller mounting broke so I had to epoxy it in there. Belt changes require removal of the roller, so when this belt gives up I won’t be able to change it. I’m surprised my wife hasn’t just taken a pair of scissors to it. A common refrain around our house is “why does all of our stuff have to be so broke-a$$?”
My experience with buying used tires is that Craigslist and model specific car forums can be great, but I’ve learned to avoid junkyards and used tire shops. I got a Tire Rack Michelin snow tire and wheel package for my Subaru with only one season on it for $250, and a set of 10/32 Blizzaks for the Benz for $200. Junkyard stuff may look okay, but you never know how long the tires have been flat-spotting in the yard or what internal damage they may have suffered in the accident. The used tire shops tend to sell tires that were taken off for a reason, and want stupid money for anything that’s actually decent.
Been awhile back, but when I bought used tires, I went to Goodyear or Firestone stores in better areas of town. I figured that these folks did not make a living from hawking used tires, but that they would probably get some decent ones from old retired guys who replace the ones on their Buicks after 3 years “because they’re gonna dry rot”. Higher supply and lower demand usually worked in my favor as opposed to the dumpy used tire places in the poorest neighborhoods were everyone went to save a buck or two.
Unfortunately it seems like these days, at least around here, the new tire shops don’t keep or retail their good take offs. They wholesale them to seedy used tire places that charge top dollar for misrepresented tires. “Oh yeah, looks like 90% tread left, sir.” Of course when I show up with a tread depth gauge, “90%” is really 4-5/32.
Your my kinda guy Steve. I HATE going to any type of store & avoid buying anything new.. The guys at “my” favorite scrapyard know me so well, I have a “line of credit” there so to speak.
I’ll never buy another new light bulb or major appliance again. Some of the lighting & shelving in the shop are scrapyard-sourced. The rest came from either auctions or Craigslist.
The used tires I find at the yard allow me to keep a large number of vehicles as daily drivers — these scrapyard tires aren’t Maypops either. For example, I scored a set of 80% Uniroyal 16 inchers off a smashed Taurus for $40 for a lady I work with last week to go on her 240K Grand Caravan 🙂 Buying new tires doesn’t do me a lot of good when they dry-rot before I run 25% of the tread off of them.
It’s incredible how wasteful a lot of us are. I like to document my scores; here’s some cool stuff sourced from the scrap pile three weeks ago. This pile was somewhere in the $5 range I think. Most of my hauls used to be mostly old car parts…but as the 90’s and 00 garbage has seemingly taken over, my stashes have been more non-vehicle related. Heck, the outside light on our porch came from the scrap pile…. and my wife actually LIKES it better than what used to be there, LOL
Awesome! You made my day!
“XM? Sirius? Yeah, but who cares…”
No way buddy – it’s the best $8 a month I’ve ever spent.
My problem with CL/ebay/PAP is I get too exhuberant in my thoughts/plans and never finish the project. Working now with an ebay reseller to get my leftover stuff from the old car sold off.
Back in 1991 I got my first car, a ’71 Mk I Ford Escort 1300XL, complete with a dried out padded dashtop that was cracked with big holes in it. One day I was walking past the local rubbish tip and noticed a totalled Mk I Escort upside down among the scrap metal. Wandering in I found its padded dash was nearly brand new and looked immaculate. 5 minutes later it was in my hands; 30 minutes later my Esky was now perfect! (Well, as perfect as an old Escort can be anyway!)
I’m suprised there are salvage yards that leave aftermarket stereos in the vehicles. The local one here carefully removes them and sells them on Ebay!