Great Junkyards

After Madhatrs thread about finding the roof for his 53 Chevy I was thinking that a thread of awesome junkyard pictures would be cool.

These were taken back in October of 2005, I heard there was a Scirocco WAGON at a auction in Bettendorf, IA. I loaded the truck and trailer and hit the road. The wagon wasn't there but 500 cars that had sat in this yard since the 40's were quite a draw. It was a holding lot rather than a junkyard so the cars were mostly complete.

Lower yard

One fellow bought all of the Beetles, about $300 a piece as the scrap yard had an offer of $286 for each car.

Heck, the way the patina trend is going, most of those cars would be the hight of cool if you got the running as is!

I've NEVER seen a JY with more than one or three cars from the 70's or earlier.

In reply to chandlerGTi:

Oh how I wish I had some photos of Toledo, Ohio's old self serve junkyard, King of the Road Auto Parts (KRAP). Yes, every part you bought from there had krap written on it in paint pen. Ha.

A virtual OSHA and general liability nightmare in this self serve lot of stacked cars. In about the year 2001 they had about 7 Gen1 MR2 on site. The place only really cared about engines and transmissions from American cars. Small stuff from foreign cars was super duper cheap.

It's still open, and it is still full of cool stuff.

This was one we stumbled on in Bryan Oh,

Sadly, it has been cleared out as well.

In reply to chandlerGTi:

You guys now have my attention! It's still open? And in Toledo- where abouts?

I think there is a pick and pull right along US23 just north of Toledo. Blissfield maybe? You can see cars in the woods from the highway, but I've never had time to go look for it.

I don't think that is open to the public, KRAP is out by the airport. It was closed for about a year by the EPA and they are reopened now; I've not been since they reopened so not sure why is still there. That Nissan Patrol is not there any more, the Datsun still is(or was) and the Benz with the 460 is gone also.

There used to be an old car junkyard in southwest Ohio somewhere. My dad took my there many times when I was a kid. I don't think it has anything newer than 1975. They had three 1964 Buick Electra 225s but none had the ever elusive fender skirt we needed after a boat hit ours and destroyed it. Cool place.

Krap is OPEN?

I wonder if it is still the same unsafe place or is it now "sanitized" like all the more recent self pull places.

Sounds like the need for a GRM gathering.

Edit:
Next week, Weds, I'll probably have business reason to be up that way about 10am. I'll bring a pair of boots (the place was always notoriously muddy) and try to get over there for a glance. I'm strangely excited about this (but I'm sure y'all understand. )

Huffs over near portland indiana has a bunch of old stuff. Most of it too gone to use but fun too look at. Graveyard 2 in coldwater ohio had a bunch of prewar stuff a few years ago, before scrap went way up.

Havnt been too grimms down near hagerstown md in years but it used too be awesome!

Houghs in Bryant In and Graveyard 2 are awesome also, I was at Houghs and they were bringing in twenty VW vans that they had bought from an estate. Crazy cool stuff

@chandlerGTi that Benz with the Ford engine looks like a project give up that is crazy maybe a 351 Cleveland 4bbl and not a 400M the 4bbl Cleveland would be a nice find with the original heads and factory intake. I'm pretty sure the square bore carb pattern is right but those 400m's often get passed off as real Cleveland's funny how those old gas hog motors have gone away. O.K it's not funny it's sad; I got to go now.

Not a Ford guy, it said 460 on the windshield.

John, call me I'm there too

In reply to chandlerGTi:

Cool pics, I am glad I could inspire such a possibly awesome thread. My wife's Grandparents had a salvage yard before I met her, and she likes to take pictures so she likes this kinda thing too. We have a few CD's with probably several hundred old junkyard pics on them. I will try to dig them up... but photobucket and I are having words right now

I see the windshield now I guess it was decieving that the Benz had enough room in there to make the 460 engine look small. Now if only it was a 429 the "Big Block that thinks it's a small block" that would be fun too.

My local junkyard's great because I scored two Celica buckets for the Crown Vic for $30. Another $13 or so went to a short Gen 2 Explorer console.

JohnRW1621 wrote: Krap is OPEN? I wonder if it is still the same unsafe place or is it now "sanitized" like all the more recent self pull places. Sounds like the need for a GRM gathering. Edit: Next week, Weds, I'll probably have business reason to be up that way about 10am. I'll bring a pair of boots (the place was always notoriously muddy) and try to get over there for a glance. I'm strangely excited about this (but I'm sure y'all understand. )

So you are sure that it is "mud"?

I agree on the meetup and am in for deets on your trip if you make it. No time off work for me until Christmas though :-(

Dang. Wish I knew of some decent yards less than 2 hours away from Pittsburgh.

French Lake Auto Parts in Annandale, MN is pretty awesome... it used to be more awesome before they reorganized it and figured out how much some stuff is actually worth now that the internet is a thig and began charging accordingly, but the whole back half and everything on the south side is old stuff going back to the 1920's..

not only is the family that owns the place good friends with pretty much every professional wrestler that you've ever heard of, but this guy bought a Boss 429 Mustang from the owner a few years ago and featured it on his tv show:

and the owner of the place wound up buying his old Caprice Gumball rally car..

i bought the Nova that i had way back when from the guy that sold Richard Rawlings a Boss Mustang... i'm like 2 steps removed from a semi famous guy..

chandlerGTi wrote: John, call me I'm there too

As it stands, it looks like I can get to KRAP at about 9:30 am tomorrow, Weds 30th. I'll have up to 2 hours to kill.

I'd like to find a set of Ford Focus 15" 4x108 alloys to use on winter tires. Maybe also a set of Toyota alloys that are compatible with the Prius 15"(Corolla, Matrix, etc)

I realize I don't have your number so here is mine 419.541.1335

I'll take pictures and see what is interesting.

If anyone else is around, join.

Location details

Woody's in Columbus often has unusual stuff. They don't churn their inventory as fast as some other local yards. They had an Alfa 164 for a while that a friend kept going back to and pulling spares from. They usually have a good assortment of Volvo 240s. It's a nice break from the more corporate owned yards in town.

I called KRAP and asked the price on alloys.
$40 each. I guess the days of $20 each are over.

KRAP is still a cosmic E36 M3hole. I say that with only the greatest inflection of positivity that I can. A E36 M3hole in the best possible sense of the word.

I live an hour away from here now and had heard that it was closed. I used to live 20 minutes from there and was in the general area all the time between '95 and '06. I used to be amazed by the place...and nothing has changed. Its still a complete OSHA and EPA nightmare and they still let you out onto the lot by yourself.

I came in asking for 2 sets of wheels to use as "winter rims" on winter tires. Needed for '00 Focus ('00-'10) and Prius. I expected they would not have Prius but Corolla of '03 and newer would work.
Like so many other places, they take the alloys off right away but unlike other places they have like a 10 foot tall heap out back of alloys with tires on them. Absolutely no way to find an actual set but they said go ahead and look for yourself anyway (I suppose you could get lucky.) The office guy then had one of the workers take me out to the yard and look over the Fords for me. Most everything out there has even the steels off but we found a '10 Focus with all 4 steels and all 4 hub caps. The yard guy did all the work taking them off (I helped load them on the truck.)
We looked over the Imports too but found no Corolla alloys. We did find one set of steels but with no caps. I decided to wait on those. All in all, I had the yard employee with me for about an hour searching the lot. Thank god we were driving the lot (in a krap-tastic '90's F150) because the mud and the ruts in the roads were amazingly deep. Like, up to the front bumper deep.

So, 4 steels rims, 4 factory hub caps, all 16 lug nuts and 16 decorative lug caps. The yard also unmounted the 4 tires that were on the rims. In addition I had the yard worker for 1 hour.
Added bonus, these rims from a '10 Focus have TPMS.
Total bill... $60 for everything!
I think that's a score. Certainly cheaper than the $40 per alloy I was quoted.

Picture taken back at home. One rim was rustier than the others so I hit it after this photo with some Rustolium "Rust Reformer", black that I already had on hand.

Picture diary.

This picture trying to show the giant heap of alloys with tires but it is pretty far away from the foreground of the picture.

From the Import Section.
In just this one photo...
Mk1 MR2
Renault Fuego in front of it.
RX7
Subaru XT

They have a '96 Infiniti Q45

I could have spent all day there but I was under a time crunch. Tons and tons of stuff. I saw Pinto wagon, Vega, H-body Monza, etc. A ton crazy of '90s imports and on and on.

I should add that none of the cars they get are pristine. Actually, quite far from it but still a cool place.