Dallas Junkyard Runs

I am not especially inclined about people throwing my shit into the drink. Besides, you will note that I've succeeded where Diamond Star failed. :p

How and where did you succeed with it? Because I can't recall anything like that...


Noted, may have them shipped to me next time I'm in the U.S. Mine is an '89. Shame about the ignition switches though

Generally it's better to get new ones anyway - they tend to wear.
 
How and where did you succeed with it? Because I can't recall anything like that...

There was that whole "making it reliable" thing. Much better you will agree than the "OhGodWillItStartToday?" that most mitsus do when they get on in years.

And it only took two fires, a carb and lots and lots of tinkering. :p
 
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There was that whole "making it reliable" thing. Much better you will agree than the "OhGodWillItStartToday?" that most mitsus do when they get on in years.

And it only took two fires, a carb and lots and lots of tinkering. :p

Ennnnh. You still have the potential joys of crankwalk, mosquito-fogger-truck emulation and cracked castings potentially yet to come.
 
This week, I went over to Awesome Auto Salvage this week to scout it out (they may have a $25 all you can carry out the gate sale soon) and pull some small parts. (All pics are as usual clickable for larger versions.)

First thing inside is some apparent recent motorcycle acquisitions.








A selection of donks and that 914 that's still there.


These remains of a GL1100 were still there.




A heavily stripped Volvo 240. I guess the local college professors needed parts for their cars.




Dead FWD Volvos, mostly left untouched. Apparently nobody wants them. :p




Whatever this was, whoever was in it had a really bad day. Not going anywhere near this obvious biohazard... :p


Unfortunately, it seems the little Fairlady didn't escape the yard.








The remains of a badly-molested CRX:




Rows and rows of dead VW products. This isn't a VW or import specialty yard, either.








So much so they spilled over to the Toyota rows.


Speaking of Toyotas, someone took offense to this Toyota appliance and shot the hell out of it. Entrance side:





Exit side. Moral of story - with only a couple of exceptions, most parts of a car are not cover from bullets.




Someone converted this Land Cruiser to two-tone with the aid of some bedliner.


A Lincoln Blackwood where it belongs.


In case you were wondering why the Blackwood was a failure, note the complexity of the bed cover hinge and latch system, which means you can forget about taking it off and actually using it as a truck in any reasonable amount of time.


Some dead Broncos, one of the objectives of the visit.






If you wondered what they meant about tires being steel belted:


A stripped Buick Roadmaster:




Note the abnormally short rear doors on this 69-70 Oldsmobile Delta 88. Who thought this was a good idea on a full-sized high line sedan?
 
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Were there any signs that Oldsmobile was driven off a bridge?
 
You ever see any 80s panther wagons?
 
Nope. Those are pretty rare to find as they mostly hit terminal mileage and died some time ago. The older Panther sedans (pre-aero) are only a little less rare.

If you want to see what Pick N Pull has in the Dallas area, go to Row52.com, set a 50 or 100 mile radius and use zip code 75201 (not my actual zip code) to see what they have.
 
Nope. Those are pretty rare to find as they mostly hit terminal mileage and died some time ago. The older Panther sedans (pre-aero) are only a little less rare.

If you want to see what Pick N Pull has in the Dallas area, go to Row52.com, set a 50 or 100 mile radius and use zip code 75201 (not my actual zip code) to see what they have.

Nothing within even a 500 mile radius of that zip code. :)
 
So, along comes July and August, the hottest months around here. While it's been a bit cooler than normal (if this is global warming/climate change, please send more), it's still warm enough to make you not want to work on your own vehicle outside, let alone go to a junkyard and be surrounded by piles of hot, reflective metal.

This also happens to be the a time of year when stuff is likely to break. So of course it's the time when you're very likely to have to go to the junkyard. Here's the most recent trips to date.

In the middle of July, Pick N Pull had a half-price sale. Since my junkyard partner and I already had a list of stuff we wanted, we decided to participate and hit some of the local PNPs. As always, all pictures are clickable for larger versions.



I don't think they want handguns on the premises at Pick N Pull Dallas South...




Their set price list - each part type is one price no matter what marque or model you pull it out of. They only differ between car/truck and not many vary that way in the first place.


Perusing the list of newly set and newly removed cars.






After walking through the office, this is what greets you - the rebuilder sales area, where you can still buy the car out of the yard. Sorry, no panoramic, just panning shots.






Spotted what was left of this old Thunderbird. Either they took really good care of the vinyl roof or it was replaced at some point.






Then this abomination upon car-kind, the Ford Aspire.




I have no idea what the sticker on the back quarter says, but the owner was still an idiot for putting it there.


70's Thunderbird, IIRC it was a 74:





Proof that FWD sucks - a FWD Miata aka the Mercury Capri:



In case anyone ever wondered what the hidden parts of a 9th generation Ford F-150 FlareSide bed look like when you cut off the external flare. No, I have no idea why someone neatly cut the bed side off then left the panel just laying there.




The naked firewall of a 9th gen Ford truck.


This is where it belongs.


An ancestor of thomas' Cadillac - an older D-Body Coupe de Ville. Was in great cosmetic shape, looked like someone had tried to take care of it. I initially couldn't figure out why it was there.


Then I looked under the hood and saw the engine.



Check the fender sides just to be sure...


Yup! This was the V8-6-4 engine, the very first intentionally variable displacement engine in the world. It was a massive failure and when certain things broke they simply could not be fixed. This one seems to have soldiered on until now, somehow.

A Geo Metro, one of the worst cars sold in America. Fortunately most are long dead now.


With its craptacular little 1.0L three cylinder engine.



This is what's inside the right rear fender covers/inner panels of a Suburban or Tahoe with the separate rear climate controls - a separate climate control core box with a fan, a heater core and an evaporator core.



We spent some time pulling some relatively desirable brackets off Ford E-Vans. These allow the fitment of more powerful Saginaw power steering pumps to 7th-9th gen Ford pickup trucks that came with Ford C2 pumps. For some reason Ford decided to only fit these to the vans.



The used pumps are usually in sad shape so we take them off the brackets and only retain the brackets, bolts and pulleys - all else you can easily and cheaply get from your favorite auto parts vendor.


This F-650 was parked outside another junkyard we stopped at. If you look carefully, you can see that the F-650 used the 7th generation (80-86) F-150 cab. This was the state of affairs until well into the 2000s when they finally stuck the SuperDuty cab on it.


Another Pick N Pull yard had this sitting behind the "not ready for the public" fence was the corpse of a heavily riced Mustang.



More stuff behind the fence.




Dodge pickups with V6s have this enormous weird fan shroud on them. We put it nose down, dropped a plank on top of it and used it as a tool stand.


Isn't this one of Rickhamilton's favorite colors?


This Super Duty was only out on the yard two days at this point. It's been pretty well stripped. It'll have been completely stripped and crushed about a week after I took the picture. SDs do not last long in PNP yards.


A late Ford Pinto. It apparently didn't run, didn't have a key and the engine was missing parts when it arrived. I can't imagine why...


This is what happens when you leave your bright red car in the Texas sun for years.


On the way out was this Buick Century T-Type, an insult to the T-Type badge:


There was this hunchback Cadillac Seville, a model Cadillac would probably prefer we all forget it made. This is basically a Chevy Nova with an ugly Caddy body on it.


Why yes, it is a problem. (See decklid text.)


Behold! A Cavalier wagon! Do not you wagon fans adore this vehicle? Do you not want to rescue it from durance vile in the junkyard to get your wagon fix? Yeah, me neither.


More to come, got two more visits' worth to upload.
 
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I'm surprised nobody tried to save that 81 Coupe de Ville, they're very popular with the lowrider guys.
 
I'm surprised nobody tried to save that 81 Coupe de Ville, they're very popular with the lowrider guys.

They don't try to save V8-6-4s in general, too much of a hassle unless they want to do an engine swap. Also the lowrider fad is pretty much dead around here; it was replaced by donks and slabs, and even that's slowly dying out now.
 
Wonder why Opel never made an Ascona Wagon. They obviously had the tooling.
 
Wonder why Opel never made an Ascona Wagon. They obviously had the tooling.

Maybe they figured it was too awful to sell there? It really was too awful to sell here, but that didn't keep them from trying.

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Flick forward a few days and I find the horn on my 919 has died and the wires to it look like something chewed on it. Since it's up for inspection this month, I needed to grab a wiring pigtail (Honda doesn't have one in-country) and a horn. Off to L&L Cycle Salvage in South Dallas - where nobody is the right skin color to not get robbed or your vehicle carjacked. Bring a gun if you're going anywhere *but* L&L; the local criminal population leaves L&L and their customers alone because they have learned that if you attempt to steal from them or their customers, a number of large angry armed bikers will boil out of the place and beat you unconscious or beyond. If there happens to be a Dallas Police motor officer present, he will simply witness the beating and tell the ambulance crew that you "fell." I may or may not have been present for one of these alleged events. :p

L&L's more mainstream claim to fame is that they are the only all-indoor motorcycle salvage yard in North Texas. They tend to concentrate on older Japanese machines, but do sell and service motorcycles as well as part them out. They even have a crazy-ancient stockpile of old NOS parts. They've been featured on Fast 'N' Loud; here's a video 'tour' I shot of the place almost ten years ago:

[video=youtube;-CQ6xTHXuBc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CQ6xTHXuBc[/video]

So, rolled up to see the usual assortment of customer machines, machines awaiting service and machines for sale sitting outside, as is normal while they're open.



More on these a bit later. Walking inside, there's two old Honda Gold Wings that the owner is working on prior to putting them out for sale.


Moving back towards the junkyard section, there was this customer's pristine 1990 Honda CBR1000F.







Found this old Honda GL1200 sitting up on 'the hill' in the warehouse with the rest of the dead bikes.


A look back down the aisle to the main area. Hotter than hell in this big tin shed so I got what I needed and got out - not many pictures up here.


Back in the service area, some bikes awaiting breaking, some waiting for people to come pay their long overdue bills, some bikes awaiting service.


More of the same, looking back towards the entrance.



Up in the front room of the shop, there's this custom chopper with a Honda CB750 SOHC motor in it. Truly a refugee from the 1970s.


Some other stuff stashed away in the front room.



A small mountain of batteries.


Back out front and checking out the bikes there, this modern Suzuki C90 is sporting vintage Shoei (yes, that Shoei) luggage.


Customer showed up on a mildly wadded ZX-6E asking if the owner could fix the cracked subframe. Nope, gotta buy a new one.


More of the bikes parked in front. 1984 Honda VF1100S Sabre.


Somewhat battered 1994 CBR900RR - this was the parent bike for my 919.


Couple of Honda Gold Wings - a 1980 GL1100 and a GL1500.



A bedecked-with-crap GL1500.


Yamaha Voyager XII, some V-Twin thing I don't care about, and someone's wrecked Hayabusa (it goes 212mph - or it used to, not so sure now).


What's left of a 1980 Honda CX500C Custom with a Kawasaki ZZR in the background.


Miscellaneous other shots:





The owner has quite a lot of rare old vintage Japanese parts in there. In cooler weather, it's fun to go poke around in there for a couple hours and see what you can find. However, it was hotter than hell this day, so I got my stuff and got out. One more session to post and yes, it's a car/truck junkyard.
 
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Finally (for now) this past weekend we had a break from the heat with another session of rain storms. Between rain squalls there would be some opportunity to get parts.

Stopped by a place called Garland Auto Salvage, which for some reason isn't actually in Garland, Texas. They have a selection of somewhat newer vehicles as well as older ones.

This used to sit outside a local furniture store. If the intent was to use it to attract customers, I'm pretty sure it achieved the opposite. I suspect that the owner junked it when they figured out it was driving customers away.


Some things in their newer vehicle area - Buick Rendezvous (Der Stig calls these Pontiac Azteks in party frocks the "Rumpy-view," last-USDM-gen Mazda MPV, early 4th gen Camaro, recent Dodge Ram and I think that's a Jeep Liberty next to the MPV. All of these things firmly belong in the junkyard.


A selection of various trucks.


Garland is known for having odd, more exotic foreign, or just plain uncommon cars from time to time. They've had a surprising number of Jaguars over the years, which is how I know the place. 1964 Ford Fairlane 500 - I wonder if NotLaw needs some parts?



1972 Fiat 124 Spider Sport - these guys also resell cars and if they fail to sell they move them over to the junkyard side of the operation.



Apparently they must have gotten a quantity deal on Nissan Z31s or something. There's a MkIII Supra in there too.


Gran Torino striped Ford Ranchero:


93 Fleetwood, mostly stripped and may have been that way before it came into the yard.



They have another more visible sale area at the front of the property. This is the last-chance sale area; if they don't sell out of here, it's off to the salvage part of the yard. Note the Alfa hiding back behind the Chevy.




The Wall Of Dead Cars used to delineate the "car sales" area from the "car parts" area. Oh, look. There's a dead Volvo on top.


This turned out to not have what we need, so we went to a nearby Pick N Pull next. Sporadic rain precluded many pictures, but I got a few.

Another Pontiac Aztek, exactly where it belongs.


First gen Toyota RAV4L. This body style used to be everywhere but they're a rare sight around here these days.


Remains of a 1973 Ford Courier minitruck. Looks like this was left to rot somewhere for a long time.




The Jaguar XJ40 can provide a couple of interior upgrade parts for my car. When the Row52 picture looks like this, you kind of expect that you might have a chance to salvage parts off it.
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When you arrive at the car and it looks like this, you know someone screwed up and wasted your time.


Did any of those mitsus have a non-melting steering wheel/door cards/buzzer/door locks? All of those are very much on the "Not available" list around here.

All those Mitsus were gone by this trip. However, I did see a freshly set one on the yard and thought of you immediately.



Something seems to be missing from the interior...



Passenger door panel looks a little rumpled.


Seats look to be in fairly good shape, though the driver's headrest is missing. I'd guess shipping these aren't worth it.



Driver's door card doesn't seem to have totally disintegrated yet.



And that's it for trips to date, I think.
 
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Wonder why Opel never made an Ascona Wagon. They obviously had the tooling.
They made one in the UK, the Vauxhall Cavalier Estate, using Holden Camira rear body panels imported from Australia.

Car3.jpg
 
Those door cards are perfect!

Let me know how much they cost
 
So, Labor Day weekend rolled around and PNP had a sale. Due to some time constraints, I had to choose between pulling parts and taking pictures - so fewer than usual pictures. Fortunately, the temperature was moderate and that even though the humidity was high, it wasn't too bad out there.

Whoever it is at these Pick N Pulls that keeps crushing the roofs of Jaguar X300 or X308s between the time the picture is taken for the Row52 web site and the time the car is set out on the yard is still at it. No salvageable interior parts at all; this is *not* standard procedure for the yards and it's starting to piss me off. A sample of the many X30* sedans whoever it was had crushed:


Of course, they didn't do this to the lone X350 in the yards. This one looked to have been totaled out by hail.




Stopped by this 81 Ford F-150 to try to get some parts for Der Stig's Bronco, but it had a different fuel pump bolt configuration. This would be a good Ford 9" rear axle donor for anyone looking to upgrade in a 7-9th generation Ford truck.


I eventually found the special bolts in a dead Ford van of similar vintage. No pictures of the van because I was too busy scraping and bleeding to get these stupid bespoke bolt-studs out.


An example of some of the late 80s, early 90s custom bumpers fitted to service trucks:


Spotted this Mercury Mountaineer with in-bumper reflectors a la Land Rover Discovery. Couldn't remember seeing any with those before, but the reflectors had Ford part numbers and the install looked original. More on this truck in a bit.


The owner of this WD21 Pathfinder seems to have been more than a little brand confused. (Ford model decal badging on a Nissan.)



Quick look at the somewhat unusual for a truck compression rod setup of the 4WD front end of the Pathfinder.


Back on the Mercury, it had a GT40P variant of the Ford 5.0L Windsor motor. While that's not quite the version of the engine I'd want (can't find good inexpensive headers for the GT40P heads) the computer it came with is one of the ones that can drive any GT40 variant motor including the distributorless ignition system. This is also compatible with my existing (older Ford corporate) speed sensor setup, unlike the more common 98-on computers; the 95-97 computers are mandatory for anyone attempting to swap the GT40 engine into an older Ford with the least amount of problems. I pulled the computer and will use it in my eventual Bronco engine upgrade.


The ECU goes in the 'letterbox' slot in the firewall:


In case anyone ever wondered where the air pressure relief vent is on some Chrysler minivans, it's concealed behind the rear bumper skin, directly behind the rear wheel. Here it is exposed.


Someone asked me to pull some air vents from a defunct Caprice if I should go by. This car was intact less than a month ago and it looks like this now.


They wanted the center vents out of the dash. This is what it looked like when I arrived:


This is what it looked like after I found out the idiot engineers had designed it so it was impossible to remove the (fragile) vents from the front and decided I didn't care enough to spend the half hour to dismantle the dash fascia to get them out.


I successfully recovered the vents. :p

My junkyard partner and I moved on to another Pick N Pull and we spotted these in the parking lot.



These three vehicles belong *in* the junkyard, not parked outside it...

This was convenient - these crappy aftermarket speakers are labeled in such a way to inform you what you must be smoking if you think these are acceptable.


Here is another form of dealer promotion that dealerships used to do until the last decade or so. In the old days, dealerships would drill and rivet a badge promoting their dealerships to the back of your vehicle. This was another option that used to be common on trucks - dealerships would order the trucks without rear bumpers, then fit sturdier work/service-truck bumpers to them with the name and city of the dealership engraved or embossed into them. Click for the high res version to see this one - apparently it was purchased at the Horn Williams dealership in Dallas Texas. This practice was most common in the 70s and 80s and has since thankfully mostly died.


Another X30* deliberately flattopped by junkyard personnel.


Some Italo-rust.
 
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In the run up to Thomas' impending visit, the Caddy had some work done. In the course of that, we discovered that some apparently bespoke bolts that hold the exhaust on seemed to have gone missing, with the following result.


Since there were some complications as to getting the correct bolt
, I checked the local junkyards and found a dead 96 Fleetwood had recently been placed on the yard at a local Pick N Pull. My junkyard partner was interested in heading down to check out some new arrivals as well, so since business has been slow lately I took the day off and headed down for an unusual weekday junkyard run. Being summer in Texas, it was a bit warm; we had a priority mission to accomplish as well. Between the two - again, fewer photos than usual.


The 'rebuildable/resaleable vehicles' area seemed to be better stocked than usual.


A look at the second and third row of resale cars:


Including a rick-endorsed Divorcemobile!:


A look back at the gate and office:


A preview of coming attractions - looks like there's going to be a bunch of Super Duty pickups on the menu soon. These "processing" lots were rather full for this location. Whether these cars were being scrapped because of having been floating in the Gulf of Mexico down Houston way, because the economy is improving and people were just dumping old cars or because of some other reason, we both speculated but could not say.





A random inline six left lying around on the ground.



Random selection of dead cars:


Recent heavy rains haven't done the formerly level roads in the yard much good.


What's worse than the Hyundai Excel/Pony? A Hyundai Excel that was rebadged as a Mitsubishi with a higher price!




Some idiot used wood screws, tape and wire to try to hold a Taurus SHO bumper on a non SHO car, it seems. The attempt was less than successful:



There were a couple B-body wagons along the way to our goal.







The primary object of our interest, a 1996 Fleetwood Brougham.



Despite having been out on the yard only a few days, it had been significantly plundered.




On the way out of the yard with our loot, we perused the truck section and found a few gems. In the tradition of Bondo Camry, I present Bondo F-150 - where an entire quarter of the cab, part of a door and part of the bed were made of Bondo filler!


And apparently someone decided to dump their White Bitch in the junkyard.

 
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