Has anyone had a good experience actually going to a junk yard and rummaging for parts?

If so tell your story......

 

There is a web site, Car-Part.com--Used Auto Parts Market, that will broadcast your parts needs to hundreds of yards. You will get a number of computer generated responses of no value but buried in there is exactly the part you need.

I needed a hydraulic top pump that the previous owner had destroyed and found one with a damaged reservoir while mine was perfectly fine. $90 shipped.

I needed a transmission control module that the dealer wanted $2050 plus the labor to flash it to match the car. Found it on the JY site for $80, no flash required.

How's that for a story.

 

I helped a guy in Charlotte, NC at an autoX with his Lotus Elan, he was having a intermittent skip and I found the little ground wire in the distributor was on it's last thread and happen to have an extra distributor in the car with one, changed it out and he won his class. His name was Tony Drum and owned one of the largest British Car Junk Yards on the East Coast at the time, which I didn't know. He saw I was running a stock 1500cc Cortina and told me he had a GT in his lot and I could come and take all I could carry for $50 off the car. Now that was a thank you I never expected, I wish I could have made him as happy as I was, not to be.


Wayne

 

I am having more luck, with locating breakers on Great Britain. They have the most jags, and their prices are better than US yards, even with the shipping. It just takes a little time on the net, to find someone who is willing to ship you parts. Their prices are often half of what ebay sellers want......be cool....Mike

 

We don't have 'Junk Yards' in the UK any longer!

They became regulated a few years ago. The Neanderthals disappeared and the surviving ones have upped their game considerably to become MRC's (Motor Vehicle Recycling Centres).

Depollution and dismantling is more professional with the result they know exactly what they have available and where it is. The days of going along with your tool kit and scavenging in some precarious pile of half dismantled wrecks in the hope of finding the required part are long gone.

The specialist Jaguar breakers in the UK are a good source of spares.

Graham