Hot Rods REMEMBER THOSE SATURDAY MORNING TRIPS TO THE JUNK/SALVAGE YARDS?

I was thinking about how many times I got up early on Saturday to hit the local junk yards to look for parts when I was building my Model A pickup.

This truck predates the 1 800 era of buying parts.

Ed Powell's was one of my favorite because you could roam the lines of cars, you could also take the parts off or they would send Albert in the old wrecker and torch off any big pieces.

This yard was full of 40', 50's and 60's cars and trucks.

I vividly remember pulling the front brakes from a wrecked 56 Ford pickup, I also pirated a 66 Mustang automatic floor shiftier that same day, I found 2-14" steelies and 2-15 steelies and a 66 mustang rear axle.

On another trip I found a rotten Chris Craft boat and I removed the Ensign dash ( a popular Stewart Warner piece at the time.

I found a Datsun truck seat which I ended up cutting 12 inches out of the center and a Econoline steering column complete with a Grant steering wheel

The gas pedal was from the Datsun, at the time I didn't have any window regulators and I used Caprice power windows cut down to fit the pickup doors.

You gotta remember this was in the early 70's and the hot ticket for a front suspension was the Corvair, the steering was provided by a reverse Colt rack & pinion and I used a Pinto flex shaft to connect the column. I built that truck on a shoe string budget and the only major new parts I bought were brake shoes, wheel cylinders, master cylinder and brake lines

I had been seeing the new Pete & Jake 4 bar rear suspension but again being cash poor I went to Ed Powell's to see what was available, I decided on Caprice/Impala Sway bars.

I got 5 and cut one end off and use a big tap to cut threads and used female rod ends from Speedway Motors for adjustment, I made a panhard bar from scrap, I used a pair of junk yard jaguar coilover springs on the rear.

A free Buick V6 & automatic transmission powered the junkyard pickup, recap tires and moon disc and a coat of red oxide primer finished it off.
I thought the truck was cool but looking back it was crude but I loved it anyway,.



Lets hear your story of junk yard builds. HRP

 

I'm younger but the late 80s and well into the 90s at least once a month we would spend a full Saturday in different junkyards. Load the toolbox and ton of other prybars and such and head out early in the morning. Most of it being OT things but we pulled motors,trans,axles,sway bars,suspensions & etc. I loved digging through the junk,finding parts buried in the vans they usually piled things in. Pops would toss me onto the roof of big trucks or vans to scope the area for cars you may not be able to see from the ground. I miss those days...far as I know there isn't a good junkyard left in this area.

 

We still have a couple places you can do that. But, that said, it hasn't happened for me since I built the T20 years ago.

In HS when I was building my HenryJ (85-86) I pulled parts from two different yards. On yard netted me a Dana rear out of an OT Volvo 240 with 4 bar, and the other yard had the AMC spindle stubs and brakes I mounted on modified Kaiser (actually Ford built) uprights and control arms.

 

At least half my youth I spent in junkyards, those were the days when parts were cheap.

 

I remember when I was in college, and worked at the junkyard part time, and was out partying late Friday nights, how hard it was to get up at 8 to go to work on Saturday morning!

 

Not since the crushers came to town,

About 15 years ago the last hold out was Clinkscales Garage and they gave everyone advance notice that everything was going to be crushed after Mr Clinkscales passed away, for several weeks a lot of cars were saved but over 200 cars & trucks got crushed, a local guy did manage to save one of the 16 Metros. HRP

 

Different era but yes for all the same reasons. Boy all the 60’s stuff at our finger tips for near nothing prices.

 

Still do it frequently and will be going this Saturday.

 

Spent many afternoons in the Pick A Part auto salvage until LKQ bought them all up and removed the price sign at the front gate. Now you ask the counter man and the prices are based on what the retail price of the part is new. Thier buisiness is now geared more towards selling at top dollar to collision shops more than dealing w your average Joe. There werent many old cars last time I went 20 plus years ago.

 

We do have a couple "specialty" yards that have nothing but old cars, they still bring in new inventory, but again you pay a premium.

 

The yard I spent my Saturday mornings at back in the late 1970s/early 1980s is now condos.

 

As a youth in the 60's I would walk the 3 city blocks Saturday on my lunch hour & take a brief walk through a salvage yard that reclaimed metal scrap & recall an Auburn sedan atop a pile of other scrap, not sure what engine was in it but vividly recall the chrome flex pipes still intact, a team of day workers were sorting pot metal such as carburetors, hood ornaments etc. into metal barrels, bought a couple of 30's radiator caps for 50 cents, didn't have enough for a 32 bumper so stashed it under a storage shed, the following return trip it was gone.

 

Back then I was working on stuff that’s off topic for here, but I had a favorite import yard, a favorite yard at a radiator shop that had a little of everything, and a couple of more that I would hit if the others didn’t have what I wanted. None of them are around anymore. There’s a late model yard that deals with insurance totals about 10 miles from me, but they won’t let you on the yard, they pull everything. There is a Pull a Part over in Birmingham, but that’s 80 miles from me. Anthony lives about halfway between me and there, I know he knows of some places around him that are still open, but my area is barren anymore. Damn scrappers and crushers!

 

Late fifties and early sixties at Carmichel's Auto Parts in Excelsior, Mn. Interestingly it has completely disappeared, being replaced by a very upscale residential sub-division. I got to know the owner's son's (Jim and Bruce) well enough that they would let me into their "premium area", a couple of school bus bodies behind the Office. Back there, I found, among other things, a pair of Cyclone 21 stud finned heads, a Zephyr distributor converted to V8 use, and a pair of aluminum 16" racing wheels that looked great if you ran them "inside-out".

 

"Got up this morning put on my good pants. Goin' to the junkyard for a vacuum advance", New Riders of the Purple Sage.

 

Some of the best Saturday mornings in high school were spent roaming around the yards and finding stuff for my hot rods. Since I was in big iron Chevys I bought up all the big irons I could find. Then I went through the Mopar phase and had a blast finding stuff for my 70 Challenger, Darts and my Duster drag car. Then I got back into Fords and had fun ever since

 

My last trip to a "real" yard was to Temple's outside Lexington. There is an LKQ Pic-a-part in Charleston, but it only gets interesting around Christmas when grampa's old car isn't as sentimental as a new video game system. And, so far, I haven't found anything in my area worth the heat.

 

I remember paying 5 bucks for cylinder heads and dollar items are now outrageous money at the salvage yard formerly known as junk yard.

 

When I lived in Texas in the 70's Two or three of us would load up and head out to a wrecking yard out east of Waco off Lasalle ave and drive a few miles, turn right, stop a a little market for a six pack, chunk of summer sausage, chunk of cheese and a sleeve or two of saltine crackers and head about a half mile down the road to a little old wrecking yard. They had an old Packard chassis from the early 30s that had been made into a yard dog wrecker at one time that was painted school bus yellow and sat out in front of their shop. That was 1973 and I got a lot of parts for my 48 out of there.

My best story of going to the wrecking yard was from the mid 1980's when one of my students and I made a trip to Tee Pee auto wrecking in Outlook Wa one Saturday morning in my 48. We had a shopping list that included picking up a pair of front springs out of a 49/51 Merc for Paul Harper. We got my student's pieces off a 54 Chevy, picked up a couple of things I wanted and pulled the springs out of the Merc that luckily was missing most of the brake parts and sitting on the welded wheel stands where we didn't have to fight with it. We put the stuff in the back of my 48 and off we went back up the road headed home. Got about three miles up the road and got pulled over by a state patrolman who said he pulled over because my truck was too low, I said yup it had sagged a bit since I put it together and had a pair of springs in the back that I had just got at Tee Pee to replace the springs, He looked in the back, said get it fixed and let me go. It flat blew the kids mind that I got away with it.

 

Sad to say those days are gone. Haven't been to my favorite wrecking yard for two decades now, They won't let me in due to insurance regulations. A couple of weeks ago, I went to the pick a part yard to try and find those pivoting quarter window hinges and latches from a first generation Dodge minivan for my Austin Ruby and not a single one of those cars to be found. I considered them "late model". Apparently I was wrong. They are over thirty years old now.

 

Those Saturday mornings started in the late 50s when my Dad started building an inboard ski boat for the family using Glen-L plans. We went to find a suitable Pontiac engine to rebuild. We went down to the yards in Gardena, Ca along Figueroa, Main and Avalon. We hit them again when my Dad offered to buy me an engine to learn on - a 354 Chrysler Hemi. There were lots of hi-po engines to be had, Pontiac, Olds, 348 Chevys with 3x2s, Dual 4 bbl Cads, you name it.
He wouldn't buy one because he thought that they would have been abused. He did buy me a 354 Hemi all my own to learn engines with.
Later, my buddy Lance and I were back down there regularly to get Dynaflow transmissions for his '55 Buick - he liked to do neutral-slam burnouts. Not long after that Lance's next door neighbor Mike bought my hemi. We put it in his '55 Chevy and we were replacing cast iron Torq-Flites and Chevy 3rd members regularly. I bought a '58 Olds and an early hydro and put that in my first '56 Chevy along with a '57 Pontiac rear end. Many, many trips to those yards.
Those yards gave way to environmental and aesthetic concerns supposedly triggered by the comments a president made as his motorcade passed along the freeway. It's all industrial buildings of various sizes today.
Many years later, after Pick-a-Part style yards took over, I was standing in the middle of a yard in Wilmington with my buddy Mike on a beautiful L.A. Saturday morning when I said, "Damn, it doesn't get much better than this, does it? This is bitchin" Funny what makes you feel good sometimes.

 

I haven't been in a wrecking yard since just after U-Pull-It took over my local yard, guessing some time in the 80's, mostly import crap anymore.
Charge to get in then check your toolbox for stolen nuts and bolts on the way out, cripes.

 

At night I sometimes dream of my days spent in the most magical of places, the junkyards of my youth. Snakes, bees, precariously balanced wrecks stacked 3 high sometimes. Yard cars without floors, exhaust or doors. Always an adventure, top it off with an evening cruising the little strip we had. The best of times.

 

Pulled a set of SBC heads and went to pay. Price was more than advertised so I asked what gives? They charged for the rockers, balls and the nuts. I said I would be back after I stripped the heads. Guess where the loose parts ended up?

 

My area of Wisconsin has lost a lot of good ones over the past couple years, a trend I don't see slowing down. But I did stop by Tisler Salvage last week, they've still got a decent selection of old cars and despite the really high steel prices this spring, it doesn't seem like they got rid of too much of the real early stuff. I got the lower door trim and upper windshield trim off of the white Cadillac for a friend of mine who's working on a '62, and I bought the grille out of the '54 Chevy since it's good custom car builder stuff, even if it's just going to hang on the wall for now. Might go back and get the Pontiac grille too, just because it's intact and neat looking.

These places aren't going to be around forever, I doubt any new ones are going to suddenly pop up, and they're not going to keep old stuff laying around unless someone's buying parts off of them. I've learned never to leave anything behind that I might want later, because when I return, it might not be there anymore.

 

Mid 70's to mid/late 80's for me,,south side suburban Chicago,,we had Jessie's, Jerry's Valley, South Dupage and Steinhaus all with a couple miles of each other on the CalSag canal. My friend and I were there all the time. At Jessie's they were usually so drunk they didnt even know you were there half the time. Steinhaus was REAL picky who they let in the yard, TONS of really old stuff all hidden in the trees and stuff, when they closed and the crusher was coming, it was a free for all. I think all those yards are long gone, have'nt been back to that area of Illinois for seems like forever. Probably all houses and shit now. Oh,,,, the memories. They're a piece of history we will NEVER get back I'm afraid. Thanks Danny. Mitch

 

We always hit the war surplus stores too. A friend worked in a junk yard while we were in high school 64-8. He bought 3 wrecked Jag E Types for about $400 each and built 2 cars out of the pieces. In college we'd drive around and buy junk cars from peoples yards for $10-15 and sell them to the junk yard for $45-75.

 

one of the main weekend things for me, my Dad would take me along since I was maybe 13ish maybe younger I cant recall.
I would man the tool box tray and pass the tools.

 

In the late 70s some of us Orlando Early Irons would hit an area $15 junk yard bright and early on a Saturday morning. This place had an area where they put cars after the high demand parts were picked off. You paid your $15 each, signed a release, and anything you could physically carry out the gate in one trip was yours. We'd strip electrical wire and tie up tilt/Tele columns to hang over our shoulders. We'd get rearends, bucket seats, you name it, then load each other up at the gate to stumble through with our treasures. This was followed by pizza for lunch. The fun and laughs we had together were probably better than the parts.

Lee