Dallas Junkyard Runs

Come on weather!! Warm up here so that I can start hitting the pick-ur-parts here in KC. :)
Do you go to the Pick-N-Pull on Truman? I love that place, I might go next weekend.
 
Dallas really does seem to have one of the best selections of junked cars in the US - better than even most of the places in SoCal that I used to visit.

Today's run: U-Pull-It, Southwest Dallas, off Jefferson. (Yes, they're open Sunday.)

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Behold - a sea of cars. (High resolution version: http://www.dallasdrivers.org/gallery/d/24977-1/IMG_2676.JPG)

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500SEC - shame about this one, I rather liked these and they certainly were rare over here. No visible damage - maybe someone will buy it out of the yard before they send it out for people to pick over? (This fenced in area is the "new arrivals" section, where the owners sort out cars that have just arrived or are holding to sell as an entire car instead of as parts.)

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Next to the 500SEC was this 1973 Triumph TR6. A little sad, but certainly understandable why it ended up here.

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I'm surprised nobody's bought these Ghias yet. There's certainly enough VW freaks in the area and they look to be in restorable condition.

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I doubt anyone is going to buy this out of the junkyard. When it's released to the "public" area, I'm going to see if I can get the rear subframe off it. (The XJS V12 cars all have limited slip differentials, which my car is missing; sometimes they have the 3.31 rear end which I want for my car.)

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No comment needed, I think.

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Not real surprising - this is where most of those untold thousands of 944s Porsche sold in the 80s have disappeared off to.

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XJ40, anyone?

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Looks like another XJ40....

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But it's really an X300! Yes, the X300 is a restyle and bugfix of the XJ40. And since I have an X300, there are shortly going to be some additional missing parts from that car....

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Spotted this in the lot of another yard (going there tomorrow) - anyone want a Daihatsu micro truck?
 
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6 Feb 09

6 Feb 09

The results of today's run - Pick-N-Pull in Grand Prairie/Dallas, off Loop 12 north of Jefferson/Main. I was in a hurry, so not so many pics this time.

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Sometimes the most interesting cars at the junkyards aren't actually *in* the junkyards. Here's a Nissan D21 Hardbody truck from Mexico, where they apparently had a crew cab variant. Very nice, wish Nissan had sold these here in the US, but with the US-style slabside beds instead of this one with the external rails and latches.


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Got all the external "go fast" looking parts on the front...

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And on the back...

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But what's this? It's an HF! The most asthmatic weak engine ever fitted to a CRX! (And yes, the HF engine is what's still in it from the sound of it, so no complaining that it could be engine-swapped, because it's NOT.)

This CRX clearly belonged IN the junkyard. Or de-riced.

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Inside was this Rover SD1 3500, one of only 800 ever sold in the United States.
 
A SD1?!!!

Have you spotted ANY first gen RX7's out there yet? I need a few bits of trim that I don't wanna pay out the ass for.
 
Yeah, I know, an SD1. Only the third or fourth one I've seen in the US in my life - the first one was someone's daily driver in LA that I saw every day on my walk to school (black with tan interior, IIRC), the second (and maybe third) were someone's project or parts cars or something (I can't remember where I saw it), and now this one.

Yes, plenty of first generation RX-7s down there - if not in the PnP yard, then over at U Pull It or Awesome. Think there was one down at Atomic Al's a couple of weeks ago. All of those yards are open until 5pm on Sundays, FYI. I'll be back down there tomorrow snagging GM connectors for my MS project and hopefully an alternator for airmanair's Rustang if someone hasn't snagged all the Tauroid alternators....
 
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Any of those places open sunday?
 
See my edit - yes, they are.

I'm going again tomorrow, you want to join forces or something?
 
See my edit - yes, they are.

I'm going again tomorrow, you want to join forces or something?

Not sure if I can make it, and I know he (airmenair) can't What time were you planning on going?
 
Was thinking of morning, maybe 11am, as I need to do projects in the afternoon. I could swap those, though.

Just so you don't get your hopes up, I won't be bringing any of the big cats out to play, only the Little Red Assault Wagon. :D Since I'm sure you know the neighborhood, you'll understand why. :p

I wasn't expecting a-m-a to come, I believe he was thinking of picking up the alternator from me when I swing out towards the FtW area during the week.
 
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Damn....that SEC looks quite good. Any opinion why it ended up in this yard? Was it an engine issue, or bodywork?
 
Possibly it was impounded by the police and never redeemed, that's where a lot of these cars come from.
 
The rear end looks good...no visible rust.

Ugly US spec bumper though...
 
I need this kind of junkyard in my life. I would just go around and buy old crap for virtually no monies...
 
The rear end looks good...no visible rust.

Ugly US spec bumper though...

The US bumpers may be uglier than their R-O-W counterparts... but they're very protective. Especially important when you realize that most US drivers are morons.

Significant rust of any kind is unusual on Texas cars.

I need this kind of junkyard in my life. I would just go around and buy old crap for virtually no monies...

Noodle, this isn't one junkyard, but several in an area that is probably at least 100 square kilometers of junkyards.
 
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I know, I just haven't ever seen a junkyard so large in my life! the time you could spend there, looking for old gems is insane...

over here they press cars into a cube when they're not financially "saveable"
 
I know, I just haven't ever seen a junkyard so large in my life! the time you could spend there, looking for old gems is insane...

over here they press cars into a cube when they're not financially "saveable"

That's the eventual fate of these cars too (and that of most other cars in America,) but first they are offered for sale or as parts.

Junkyards like there are part of why we tend to be able to keep our cars for quite a while longer - the sheer volume keeps used parts costs low and availability high. I remember my last trip to England and going to what my host billed as "the largest Jaguar breakers' in the area" and noticing that it was smaller than the impromptu Jaguar section at just one of the local generalist junkyards.

I think you can probably guess at my reaction to the first TopGear Cheap Car Challenge - I simply cannot imagine having to *pay* a junkyard to take even a partially intact old car. Here, they pay you $500 and then turn around and make an obscene profit off them by selling parts (even at reasonable or cheap prices.)

A good example was that run I posted earlier, the one to the yard that had an X300 in it; I needed a new window glass for the Pathfinder's rear driver's side door, so I went to the salvage yard. A servicable piece of original Nissan glass pulled by yours truly out of a Pathfinder at that yard cost me a mere $27.50 including tax. They're still making an assload of money out of that car, considering that they probably bought it with a failed transmission or at a police auction for $500 or less - if you just consider the glass alone, you're looking at over $100 for the door glass alone, another $30 each for the quarter glasses, $20 for each mirror, $40 for the rear hatch glass, $50-80 for the hatch metal, $30-50 for each door sans glass.... you get the idea.

I find junkyards to be saddening sometimes, especially when you find what you know is a perfectly usable rare car put out for salvaging. On the other hand, they do allow people with mechanical skills to maintain their vehicles cheaply and easily, so that's a point in their favor.
 
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Any in houston? I'm going there for my spring holiday, and I've always liked poking around scrapheap cars.

It's perfectly possible to build on decent working car from about three differently damaged models. Yes, that is unrealistic and random, but if the yards charged you about ?700 a car, and you were allowed to poke around and change parts from another car, eventually fixing it and driving it off... so long as you brought your own tools and time and didn't mess up the yard... it IS feasible.
 
After having looked at all the pics... I now want to move to Dallas. I always was a big restoration freak (in a weird way it makes me see the car more personally, more mine... but we'll get over the mental problems later.) As I said above, it would be great to built a nice car completely from scrapyard parts. For cheap. Any suggestions anyone?
 
Of course, Houston has quite a few junkyards as well.
 
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