Pick of the Litter
You try to open the window of your 10-year-old car, but the crank handle breaks. The glove box door is attractively closed with duct tape, because the lock became stuck open during the Bush administration. You’re not destitute, but a new car isn’t in the picture unless those Super Lotto balls fall your way.
Welcome to the club. The average car on America’s roads is more than 8 years old, and in Southern California, where ice and salt are found in margaritas and not roadways, the age may even be older. Things break, but the older a car gets, the harder it is to justify putting money into it.
Say the left taillight lens of your 1986 Honda Accord was smashed by an anonymous bumper. Now the lens seems a simple item. Attached with a few screws, you can probably replace it and wash the car as an afterthought. But that cheap piece of plastic commands $117 when bought at a Honda dealership. The alternative, besides putting some red wrapping paper over the hole, is to pick up a used lens at a wrecking yard for about $50. And while you’re at it, you might find a hubcap to replace the one lost ages ago.
“Junkyards are a great resource when you’re trying to keep an old car going,” says Ron Albright of La Habra, who can often be found roaming through the wrecks in a quest to give his 1964 Dodge Dart convertible immortality. “It can take some work finding a yard that has what you want, but it’s a lot of fun to find a part you thought you’d never get.”
The first thing to know about junkyards or wrecking yards is that they’re undergoing a make-over. Their owners would like you to forget about rows of rusty, leaking wrecks with tetanus-inducing jagged edges guarded by mongrels. And many of the more than 100 wrecking yards in L.A. County are working hard at it.
“The junkyard of today is much cleaner than it was 20 years ago,” says Bonnie Chase, a district supervisor with the Health Hazardous Materials division of the county Fire Department. “There are some operators we’re still working on, but most are good about disposing hazardous wastes and paving their yards so that wastes don’t reach the soil.”
“I dare say, you could walk around our yard barefoot,” says Dave Hester, who manages Grand Prix Auto Parts and Salvage in Sun Valley. “The way this business is today, you can’t afford to be sloppy.”
Junkyards (or auto recycling centers, as many like to be known) can be broken up into the full-serve and the self-serve. At full-service yards, junked or wrecked cars are bought, then stripped of any usable part, from an alternator to the cigarette lighter. Toxic fluids are drained and carted away, then the parts are labeled before being inventoried and stacked.
Show up at a full-service yard looking for, say, an antenna for a 1990 Lexus, and if they don’t have it, they may be able to find it for you on one of the “shout down” lines used to communicate with other yards. If no one locally has it, the yard can use one of two computer networks free of charge to the consumer to track down a part. “It’s gotten to where we can find absolutely anything,” Hester says.
It’s important to remember that “used” doesn’t necessarily mean “cheap.” The successful parts recycler keeps abreast of how much new parts cost. In other words, you won’t find a $250 part for $10. The rule of thumb is that you’re generally paying about 50% less than a new part. That Lexus antenna? Figure on paying about $100, while the dealer wants $184. And expect to pay a little more for parts on an expensive car or one in demand.
The self-serve yard is a whole different game. Here, prices are generally much lower--about $25 for any radiator, $1 for any hubcap. The catch is that you don’t know if they have what you’re looking for unless you pay the nominal entrance fee, usually $1, and you’ve got to bring your own tools to remove the part yourself.
“We get all kinds of people, from those looking to keep their car running to the hobbyist trying to restore an old classic,” says Cindi Galfin of Pick Your Part, which has seven recycling centers in Southern California.
“We recycle the cars we get about every 25 to 35 days, so there’s always fresh inventory,” Galfin says. “In some of our bigger yards in Wilmington and Sun Valley, there’s around 1,800 to 2,000 cars to choose from.” What do the self-serve yards and X-rated movies have in common? You have to be 18 to get inside.
On the downside, if the car you’re trying to patch up is unique or collectible, a self-serve yard probably won’t do you much good. “They mainly have the cheaper American and import cars,” says a man who wants to be known only as “Cadillac Joe.” Joe is a ‘50s Cadillac aficionado, having restored five of them. For the unusual car, the best way to find parts is to check with ads from owners’ clubs in car magazines or Hemming’s Motor News.
On some mechanical parts you may be able to buy a short-term warranty. Used engine warranties typically run about $100 to $150 for 30 days, while for a part such as an alternator, you might spend $10 to $15. A warranty? From a junkyard? “Our state-of-the-art facility in Anaheim has a Mediterranean-style office,” Galfin says. “We’re out to get a new image.”
