Understanding Emergency Protocol

Making A Little Extra Money From Your Junker Before You Send It To Salvage

26 June 2015

Eevi Annala

A salvage yard or removal service may pay you a nominal fee for your junker. That fee usually has to do with the weight of your car. However, there's far more profit in parting the car out, but it's an intensive process and requires a lot of knowledge on how best to sell each piece.

Even though most people don't have the skill or patience to take cars apart, you don't have to completely dismantle your car. You can pull a few select parts. Some parts are an easy sell and can earn you a nice profit. It's possible to sell some parts while leaving just enough of a car to sell or give away to salvage yards.

Which Parts Can You Sell?

The truth is that every part of your car has some kind of value to it. But there are a few pieces that may be more worth it. There are two categories of value when it comes to parts.

1. Type of part - Various parts have some value regardless of make or model of car. In addition, there is a market for parts that you probably didn't even know about. If the part is intact, or fixable, then there's likely a buyer somewhere. Even tiny things like sun visors or ignition switches can command a nice price.

2. Type of metal - If you don't want to deal with individual parts, and parts of parts, you can sell parts by their metal content. Things like catalytic converters are always sought after, as people often need them. Also, they contain platinum, palladium, or rhodium, all of which hold value.

There's also a lot of copper in many cars. You can find copper wiring, copper in radiators, copper in many engine parts, and copper in many other places under the hood. All of these parts and materials offer you many options for selling a few parts before junking the car.

Which Parts are Most Valuable?

Some parts have intrinsic value, such as the aforementioned catalytic converter. Parts with valuable metals have a steady, high value, at all times. But some parts are only valuable to people specifically looking for them.

For example, you may still have an intact radio or dash module that only fits a specific type of car. Someone else is out there desperately searching for that item. The same goes for virtually every car part.

Sometimes, a combination of rarity and need can drive the value of an insignificant part through the roof. This is why research is so important. You need to know if a part is worth the effort beforehand.

Before junking your car, you should do a search online to see if there are people looking for specific parts that you can provide. Online classifieds and local car forums are a good place to start. Look for sellers to see the kinds of things they sell. Look for buyers to see what they're actively searching for.

Avoid Spending too Much Time on This

Some professionals out there can literally break a car down to its nuts and bolts. If you would like to try your hand at parting out an entire car, then feel free. However, for most people, the key here is to scrap the parts you can get to quickly and easily.

Many junk removal services do not particularly care about the condition of the vehicle in question. If you can make some extra money by removing a piece here or there, then by all means, do that first.

You can also attempt to negotiate with the junk car removal service, such as those at A-1 Towing Service. It's possible the service will pay extra if you show you know which parts of your junker have a little more value than others. So in some cases, you don't even have to remove a single part to see a little extra for your junker.

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