Folks Of Interest What's the coolest thing you have found dumpster diving?

No, they're transport cases for putting kayaks on top of your Volvo:

 

Not dumpster diving, but back in the 80s there used to be this huge gravel parking lot in Virginia where everybody parked on Friday and Saturday nights. Had my 31 Model A highboy parked shooting the bull with friends and here comes two officers in an unmarked slowly going up and down the rows. Stopped behind the 31( figured I was in trouble). One officer came over and talked about the 31. Asked if I want a new fibergl*** hood for it. I said I couldn't afford. He said I didn't ask you that. He said wait here, came back and I ended up sticking it upright behind seat and cruised on home

 

Bump for an old thread

 

Fun old thread. My black and Decker industrial chop saw came out of the junk pile behind an industrial plant 30 years ago. I had to replace the brushes in it and it has worked ever since.
When I was teaching auto shop I used to go up to the Midas Muffler shop and dig though the s**** metal bin in back and get a bunch of the "mistakes and cut offs they had thrown out that were new unused bends and pieces. I used some of it but over the years a lot of the kids patched up their exhaust pipes with pipe that I had cabbaged out of that bin.
Over the years I have had better luck finding stuff alongside the road in front of my house. I found a 31 Ford Cowl one year, an aluminum ramp from a convoy truck and a ten foot section of scaffold that I use quite a bit and a nice step ladder. Half the life jackets I have in my boat came off the side of the road including a couple that still had the store price tags on them.

 

Found an unusual vintage engine stand. It had a "U" shaped base and the engine mounted sideways - not like one of those for a flathead. Hard to describe. Loaned it out to my boss who mounted his 392 hemi onto it. I'm sure that I will never get it back from him but I can live with that.

 

I'm kind of a weirdo If I see really old rancid tires (ones that look like bias treads) In an illegal tire dumping area I will go through and look for wheels You would be amazed how many 40 to 48 Ford wheels I have found that way I would imagine by this point it's at least a dozen. Also out in my local desert here in Southern California just goofing around in a two-wheel drive pickup probably 10 miles off the highway I came across a 1939 Ford front end that was complete I actually still have it set away for a future project I am planning. These days that stuff is starting to get hard to find dumped in the desert but I still come across it If I'm really looking.

 

Found an Edelbrock "Tarantula" intake for a SBF years ago when I took the trash out at my wife's condo.

 

I once hauled a 6X4' trailer out of a dumpster with a couple of friends. We managed to get it up teetering on one edge, then pushed it over the side. One guy stood underneath it, as if to catch it on it's way down. I told him to get out of the way, it's coming down and you aint gonna stop it! It had no tow hitch, so I just tied it to my towbar with a piece of rope, and took it home. Welded on a hitch, gave it a quick coat of enamel, put some lights on it and sold it a few days later.

 

When I was about 19 years old I was scrounging through a vehicle s**** yard (not an auto wrecker, but headed for the shredder. I found a speedometre in an Edsel that went to 200. I found out later it was for export and there was a K on the back of the unit indicating it was metric, as in kilometers. I sold it many many ... many years later to a man driving his Edsel regularly. Being in Canada, it was quite helpful to have.

 

last one of those i saw years ago at a out in the boonies bar had a message under it complaining that this gum tastes like rubber

 

Best dumpster find I got was a few years ago at an indoor swap meet. Walked past a dumpster and saw the aluminum handle of a hand truck sticking out of the dumpster, so I looked inside to find one of those expensive hand trucks that convert to a flat bed cart! I hauled it out with help from a friend and looked it over trying to figure out what was wrong? Finally noticed that one front swivel wheel had lost it's bearings. So I pushed it back to my rig and tucked it away.
When I got home I went to the web site for the name on it and saw they sold this model for almost $700! But a new wheel was $11, so I ordered one. It's a fantastic hand truck/cart and I use it often. Guessing somebody just got ticked off when the wheel failed and tossed it away.

 

2 spanners in a discarded toolbox. Both 1/2 and 7/16 open ends. Had very mild surface rust. Have a little script on that says Snap On. What! They are beautiful to look at and use. I have no idea of their age. When were Snap on wrenches not chromed?

Chris

 

I rented a section in a multi tenant business business building. There were were two almost identical buildings with multiple small businesses. In between the buildings was a shared driveway/parking lot. At the far end there was a communal dumpster. I'd always go back and check to see what the other tenants threw out. One business had a 6'x6'x6' cube industrial control panel they gut out and left sit out for a s****per to come by. I made sure the business didn't want it and took it into my shop and made a sand blasting cabinet out of it. Another time another tenant placed a large transformer by the dumpster. I picked it up, took it to my shop and dis***embled it an s****ped it for the steel and cooper. I think I got close to $200 for the metal. Another time, not quite a dumpster dive but went to my friend's shop and he had wire bins full of aluminum fixtures he pulled out of a factory. He move machinery for his business. I told him he had a small fortune in s**** aluminum sitting there. He said he told his employee he could have it all but he didn't want it. There was a lot of steel clamps and blocks bolted to the aluminum plate and the employee didn't want to screw with it. I asked my friend if I could have it and he said "knock yourself out" I spent the next two weekends hauling the metal to my shop and my wife and kids spent time dismantling the plates. There was aluminum plates that were from 1/4" to 1" thick and roughly 2'x2-3'. I loaded them up in my truck, took them to the s****yard. When the truck was unloaded the rear bumper went up over a foot. I think I got over $500 for the load.

 

A 1941 Ford Pickup Hood With All Of The Hardware...

 

I'm a construction super on large projects.
Its amazing what is left over on site and I make several calls for subs to come and pick it up. Drills ,grinders ladders, scaffolding ect. I will take it home and use it, if they mention it later come to my house and get it. I wont trash it. Case in point was a mag drill with a lot of annular cutters, They asked me about it long after job was over so I gave it back.
I do miss it.

 

When we were more into early Fairlanes and Falcons a friend asked if I wanted a differential that was dumped on the front yard of a house, waiting for the junkman.
Well of course!
It turned out to be an 8" Ford, and on taking out the center section found it was a limited slip.

 

Hey, Chris......I seem to remember back during my Navy days, that some of the tools were Snap-on, and not chromed. If there's a "G" suffix to the model/serial number, it's a government contract tool, and you won't be able to swap it for new if you need to.

Roger

 

During dubya dubya II they also skipped the plating on lots of tools. Can you find a date code on the tools?

 

Most all of industrial Snap On hand tools we were furnished on the pipeline crews were black and took a beating . Amazing the cost difference purchasing straight from Snap On and not the tool pirate truck .

 

Here are the lovely wrenches I found. The code looks to be 8-1416 B.

Chris

 

OK. Doesn't look like any of the contract wrenches I'm familiar with from the late 80's.

Roger

 

I was 19 years old and working for an aircraft salvage company in central Oklahoma. If I wasn't tearing down V-12 Allisons or any of the different radial engines, one of my jobs was loading up all the trash and busted shipping crates onto a truck and hauling it to the local landfill. One day at the dump, I drove past a pile of brand-new S & H Green Stamp sheets about 6 feet wide, 2 feet high and about 20 feet long. Whoever dumped them hadn't done a very good job of setting them on fire. I grabbed as many as the cab of the truck would hold and that night, I took them home. The only thing that I could find wrong with them was the adhesive wouldn't stick. My mom and I got as many empty books as we could from different stores and with the help of some library paste, we filled a couple hundred books. I bought a couple of new tires from the local Western Auto, and my mother got new pots and pans. As I recall, there were still stacks of stamps waiting to be glued.

 

Maybe the 8 is the date code, the shape or font of it determines decade:

 

I was in western Montana years ago and driving past a gully where people had been dumping stuff I saw a 54 Chevy grille sticking out of the pile. After a bit of work it was in my truck. Cheapest 54 grill I ever had

 

My Dad and I used to take a day, now and then driving around exploring abandoned properties here in Nevada, Found many worthwhile parts and pieces. My Dad was an expert Model A guy. one of the best pieces we found while I was building my 29 Business Coupe, and I have a picture of is the original Fan Shroud from a Model A truck , Which was in a big burn pile , my dad spotted it and knew exactly what it was. I brought it home, cleaned it up and is a great addition to my Coupe.

 

A company that I worked for years ago had a couple of s**** dumpsters that some of us were always checking out. I scored a 12" Mitutoyo dial vernier caliper that just needed to be calibrated and a pair of precision ground angle blocks that I still use often. For awhile we had a "Director of Manufacturing" whose mentality was, "If I don't know what it is, we don't need it!" She couldn't bang two boards together to save her soul; how she even got the position is beyond me. Anyway, I saw some good stuff (that we later needed) get tossed, a few things that I scored, and managed to prevent a few things from being tossed, such as all the change gears, faceplates, chucks, and steady/follower rests for the lathe.