Breaking down cars!

I have been thinking of this for a long while.As to breaking down the cars as to pulling motors and transmission and harness wire to maximize profits.There was a guy here that was a self made millionaire.He used to buy motors and break them down 100% sell everything inside the motor seperate.I dont know how much he made per motor but would this be a good idea to maybe someday do.I know you have the steel bolts the aluminum heads and pistons which pay alot more than the .1225 per pound you get for the whole car.Also aluminum blocks and such of the cars nowadays would be even more money broken down.What do you guys think?I would say if you can sale the whole motor for $.20-.22 per pound then broken down even father you would make a lot more.

I currently pull the Aluminum Heads ESPECIALLY when a V6
as most V6's I can't get that Cat between the head and the Firewall without pulling the head

But will the additional payout cover the additional time and trouble and storage?

Extra storage units / places would be needed

I currently have about 12 storage bins >> have one bin for each >>
Batteries
Aluminum wheels/rims
Dirty Aluminum > Heads and so on
Clean Aluminum > Radiators, AC parts, in dash AC and Heater coils
Electric motors
Insulated copper wire
Dirty Copper
Clean Copper
O2 sensors

Then more bins for RAS Cores
Alternators
General Cores

and of course the cat bin

I've tried pulling motors and trans. Way too much hassle for me. I pick the easy stuff then haul the carcass in.

Ok even if you didnt break down the motors and transmissions there is still say a extra $39 for a 400 lbs motor and and if the trans weighs 150lbs then thats only 11.62 extra so a total of maybe $50 extra.If it took you 2 hours to pull it that is $25 per hour which does seem bad.
But i thought going a step father would yield even more profits but maybe not.
I mean like on the aluminum heads if you clean them they would be like $.40-$.60 per lbs which is alot more than the $.1225 if you leave them on the car.

im new to this forum, and just starting to get into scrapping. I usually scrap cars, what are you guys doing/getting for the o2 sensors?

thanks

Originally Posted by cashman

im new to this forum, and just starting to get into scrapping. I usually scrap cars, what are you guys doing/getting for the o2 sensors?

thanks

Buyer on here buys them don't remember the price.

Originally Posted by scrapping4ever

Buyer on here buys them don't remember the price.

ok thanks, i will do a little more homework.

i never take them off but it is alittle more money in the pocket

Now Days When I break down a vehicle I usually take the easy stuff from the engine bay. Usually consists of Radiator w/ fans, Aluminum Intake and Heads, all of the Wiring Harness, master cylinder, AC Compressor Pump, Starter & Alternator, Rack and Pinion or Gear Box, Heater blower Motor, and O2 Sensor(s) and transmissions if there is a decent Core Value. You will make a lot more money pulling Complete Motors and Transmissions out and breaking them down. It all depends how hard you like to work, for me it usually takes an hour to remove (that's with a cherry picker and power tools) then another hour to break down engine and transmission. I use to break cars/trucks completely down motor, trans, frame, etc but that's when I owned a skidsteer and the room to do it.

Back when I was a kid (too many years ago to admit) I once watched an outfit that came to town to the local auto wreckers to squash cars and ship them out. They had a John Deere wheel loader with forks on it to move cars around. He used a fork to lever open the hood, then pushed the fork down under the front of the motor and popped it out like shucking an oyster. Took about a minute. I don't remember any further dismantling operations so I think they did it just to get the car squashed tighter for getting the max load on the truck.

Not sure if that would work as well with today's transverse mounted motors.

Focker, I suspect if you chased down more info on the millionaire who specialized in dismantling engines you would find he probably had a lot of special tooling made up to speed the process. If he just did engines, did he process cars or did egines come to him already out of the car?

I wonder how much stuff he resold as engine cores?

I would think the small guy would have to be maximizing the sales of everything out of the engine--anything that can go for more than scrap, ie, cores, would have to be diverted accordingly.

The engines would have to be set up so they can be accessed quickly, maybe on an engine stand like is used for engine rebuilding. Zap out the top end bolts, flip the engine and zap off the pan and crank bolts. Water pump and stuff on the front is easily accessed as well. Pistons could be hammered out unless they are seized in the bores so some sort of press would be needed. The same sort of process would be necessary for the transmission.

I can see lots of time and recovery studies would be necessary!! And lots of motors, too because I'm guessing that batch processing of say, 10 identical motors at a time would be necessary to speed up things.

If there isn't much money in recovering engine parts for cores for more than scrap value then it is probably better to munch up the motor in a shredding machine (or whatever they call those things that chop up motors and trannys) and separate the metals once it is shredded up.

An interesting problem and maybe money there but very monotonous work!!

Jon.

At our yard we use and excavator mounted shear to remove engines and trans. Engines with aluminum are piled and sold to the chinese/indians who I assume break them down further.Older cast engines are munched up with the shear and sold as heavy melt. There must be more money to be made if we do it that way.
Which reminds me of a true story: Back when I first got married in 1977,my now ex wife and I had no job and no way to pay the rent,but she had a 1967 chevy van. We soon found out that scrapping paid the rent and bought beer. We progressed to working for a salvage yard with me driving lugger truck and her working in the warehouse stripping metals by day and working part time in a movie theater at night. One of us had the bright idea of stripping engines in the warehouse on weekends since we had a ready supply of engines that had been already pulled. Since Sherry had a 250 chevy six in her truck,we must of stripped hundreds of 250s first. Yard paid us 7 dollars per crankshaft.This is how they kept count and paid us. I used to remove pan,head covers and whatever else i could break with a fire axe and she would rattle with the impact removing heads and crank. I then drove out pistons with a hunk of firewood. We stacked heads and cranks like firewood and loaded the rest into a lugger. When she and I had enough beer,we could strip and engine in 9 minutes. After about three months of this,we both moved on to better jobs in the steel/scrap industry. I used to say that you never want to get into a bar fight with the wife(she had abs and muscles from manhandling trannies and engines) and she would say that every day is and adventure with Bill (me).
I was reading this thread and that came to mind out of my pre AA days

"Focker, I suspect if you chased down more info on the millionaire who specialized in dismantling engines you would find he probably had a lot of special tooling made up to speed the process. If he just did engines, did he process cars or did egines come to him already out of the car?"

Full article at Scrap Metal Forum: http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/vehic...#ixzz2fxnGQT00

Is this for real? That would make for some interesting reading.

he bought motors already out of the cars.The guy is dead now and has been for quite a few years but he done it lol.

I try to go for truck and SUVs. If you can get a good 4x4 for $600 or less, you can make a lot of money if everything works the way its suppose to of course. Trans and transfer case can bring you about $200 or so. Front and rear axle about $100. Engines ive sold whole for $150 with knocks. Tear it down, you can probably expect close to double depending on how common they are. Then you have body and interior parts. You can probably get all of this done in about a week but, again, this is only if its in decent shape. I say go for it. Its definitely worth a try