I stopped yesterday at a local junkyard (I needed a mirror for my wife’s car-it was smashed by a local juvenile delinquent). Anyway, I had a chance to look around-in contrast to the days of my youth, junkyards are a serious business today-no more old wrecks staked and stored for decades?
In talking to the manager, he told me that the business today is in recent cars only-anything older than 12-15 years gets crushed and sent to a metal dealer.
The real business is in parting out cars-doors, noses, fenders, etc.-once they are gone-to the crusher.
Which begs my question: since nobody keeps old cars around, how do you restore a 1960’s car today? Do rural junkyards still keep the old cars?
When I was a kid, you went to a junkyard-and the guy behind the desk told you where the cars was-and you took the part off yourself. You would find cars from the 1930’s-rotting away. Now, the cars are parted out and parts kept on shelves-no visits to the yard (insurance prohibits it).
So, I guess, finding body parts for old cars is getting very difficult.
Some more rural junkyards do indeed keep old cars. There was a great one near where I used to live that had lots of relatively new 90’s and 80’s cars (though not really late model stuff), but also went all the way back to the late-40’s. While it was cool to wander around the backfield of this place, most of those old cars that had been sitting in the junkyard for a decade or two were all pretty well trashed, both from having been thoroughly picked over, but also just from sitting exposed to the elements, vandalism, and clumsy parts pulling. I once went there looking for some parts for an old Buick I have and though they had 5 or 6 of those cars, none of them had the parts I wanted in decent shape.
The better bet for getting classic car parts is an actual dedicated classic junkyard or parts dismantler. Most of the cars in classic junkyards were relatively recently either on the road or parked somewhere relatively sheltered. A dismantler just takes the cars apart and puts the parts in a warehouse, so they don’t have the problem of cars sitting out in the elements.
Of course for a lot of more popular classic cars have lots of reproduction parts available. With things like Mustangs and Camaros, you can practically build a new car out a catalog if you have a frame to bolt everything to. The art of actually repairing instead of replacing parts is also not entirely lost, which is especially important with things like body panels.
To restore an old car, get one of those big plastic buckets, five gallon or larger. Fill bucket with money. Nothing smaller than five dollar bills. When bucket is full, pour over car. Rinse and repeat.
Or at least, this seems to be the method used by my husband and his brother.
I have only restored one car (so far), when I was single. I used this technique as well - but I also refused to count the bills as they went in the bucket. So, I have no idea what I spent.
Next one, a twin of the first, will be done as a married man. Not sure the same technique will work…