The Disassembly Line : Auto parts: Persistent patrons find gems among the junk at a Sun Valley wrecking yard. The lot has 3,000 beat-up vehicles, arches from a carwash and remnants of an Army tank.

Most people would look out upon the 26-acre, U-Pick Parts junkyard and just see rows of beat-up, shelled-out, mangled cars.

Robert Garcia looks out among the wrecks and sees possibilities.

“This is what I build cars from,” said Garcia, an Arleta resident who restores old cars as a hobby.

He had just found the very items he was looking for--three bulbs for the exterior lights on his cherished 1965 Buick Riviera. The total cost for these treasures: $2.

“Sometimes I can rebuild a whole car by just coming here,” he said, delighted with his find.

Garcia, 32, a regular at the Sun Valley junkyard since it opened nine years ago, knows that shopping at the 26-acre lot is a hit-and-miss proposition. There are no inventory lists, so you can spend hours searching through the 3,000 cars, motorcycles, trucks and other vehicles without finding anything on your wanted list.

“Everyone knows you take your chances when you come here,” Garcia said.

“If I don’t find it here, I have to buy it someplace else and probably pay an arm and a leg for it.”

That’s the trade-off. You can waste a lot of time at this self-service lot, but it’s worth it if you find what you need.

*

“The customers know there is no guarantee on anything. They pay cash and they do the work themselves,” said Andrew Adlin, controller for Aadlin Bros., the firm that owns the lot.

Adlin is a member of the family that owns the junkyard. The extra “A” was added to the business name, he said, so that it would get higher placement in telephone listings.

“It is almost like a supermarket,” he said. “You go in and find everything you need yourself.”

And like a supermarket, Adlin said the junkyard is restocked every day. The cars, at a rate of about 50 a day, commonly come from police auctions, tow companies, insurance companies and the back yards of people who want to make a few bucks off a car they had sitting around.

Signs in English and Spanish encourage customers to bring their own tools and wear sturdy footgear. Patrons pay $1 to get in and then pay for parts--ranging from $100 for a complete engine down to $1 paid by Garcia for the bulbs.

Junkyard workers spray-paint tools or old parts brought in by customers so that they can be identified. They also stamp customers’ hands for in-and-out privileges.

In addition to road vehicles, the junkyard is the home of huge yellow arches that once belonged to a carwash on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Ventura boulevards, a condemned Santa Fe train car and the remnants of an old Army tank with the turret still intact.

Also on the lot is 7-Up, a Brahman bull that lives in a pen in the center of the junkyard with half a dozen chickens.

Nino Gasparini, 33, was at U-Pick Parts on Thursday afternoon looking for a right front fender and a hood that would fit his 1974 Chevy Malibu. He had wrecked the car that morning.

“My car was totaled and the insurance company won’t pay for it because it is such an old car,” he said, looking through a white Malibu on the lot for parts.

Gasparini acknowledged that most owners of a wrecked car would just write it off. “But here I can fix it and not have to pay more than the car is worth,” he said, smiling.

With him was a trusted, if not enthusiastic, friend. “I don’t like to get dirty,” said John D. Kambaneli, 27, of Glendale, holding a fender gingerly.

*

Teresa Villalobos, 35, of Pacoima came to the junkyard with her husband, who was searching for parts for his Chevy truck. Wearing white shoes, she delicately stepped over grease puddles and glass.

“I don’t like coming here, but you have to if you want parts for a good price,” Villalobos said in Spanish.

“With the money we save, maybe he will get me a new pair of shoes.”