[JUDGE3]

wish I had pictures of the salvage yards of the 70's and 80s. Was thinking how back then it was not a big deal, and you even knew they had what you needed. their were several go-to yards in my area but one was biggest and had them rowed out by model. loved going to the pontiac rows. the cars were usually up on steel wheels as jackstands.

I blew several 10 bolt differentials and I remember they would always remove what you needed with a torch and just cut right thru the control arms.

piles of engines I occasionally looked thru hoping for that "wow moment" of finding a super duty that they didn't realize what it was. lol

I sure remember wishing I had a place to keep parts. so many in dash tachs/gauges/Gto hoods on and on and on.

the most elusive item then though, was the 12 bolt posi rear. everyone snatched those up. I would visit quite often hoping a "new car" came in and I was first to snag it. I finally found a 12 bolt single track, and searched for a 3 series posi carrier. never forgot this, good friend of mine's dad was a huge fisherman, turned out his dad had one he was using as a boat anchor! he grabbed it out of the boat and I was able to have it all rebuilt and no issues. I recall how elated I was about that. whats the odds? fun stuff.

[mgarblik]

We have a few "No Crush" yards still operating in my general area. One called Stark Wrecking still has cars from the late 40's and newer on the property. Most of the cars have very little if any usable parts left on them at all. They are just scattered all over the place, rotting away in the soggy Midwest. My most memorable find there was a 66 full size sport wheel in just great condition on a convertible. Took it home and put it on my 2+2. $10.00. Another larger yard called "Al's Auto Parts", used to get quite a few Delco Moraine test and developmental vehicles to scrap and crush when they were done with them. The one car that stands out to me was a 70 TA. I remember distinctly the super long blade of the giant forklift cutting right through the fender of the car and into the engine bay, bashing right through the ram air exhaust manifold! I had begged them to sell me the engine. They had to crush all those cars by order of GM.

[1965gp]

In high school in the 90’s I remember countless trips to John’s auto salvage in Seguin, TX (still there) and Spencer’s salvage outside of Austin. At that time it was a big deal to find a GTO, SS or a Charger.

You bring up a good point. The other day I went to a salvage yard to pull a fender off of a 67 Catalina for a member here and spotted a 79-80 Cutlass. Console, buckets, factory gauges…. Lots of cool parts that would have been cheap. I didn’t have time to pull them but I’m sure somewhere on a G body forum someone is looking for those parts.

[mzbk2l]

I used to patrol all the yards in Virginia in the 90s when I was in the Navy, thinking I'd hit the jackpot compared to rusty Michigan cars where I grew up. Then I moved to AZ in the later 90s and I was in heaven! A lot of the yards in Phoenix were pretty picked over by then, but Tucson still had loads of 50s-60s-70s cars in the junkyards - almost all with sheet metal that looked like it just left the factory. Most of that stuff went away when a combination of high scrap steel prices and astronomical land prices made the option of crushing the cars and selling the land a lot more enticing than selling off a hood here and a fender there.

[Half-Inch Stud]

Junkyard Time scale doenst play sensible for me. 70s-80s had 60s to 30s even 20s vehicles.

The past decade shows "U-pull-its" that extend back to the 90s. Linear scale should show 70s-60s in the field!

[Old Goat Racer]

In the early 1990's a co-worker took me to a secluded junk yard in the "boonies". Walking through I spotted a 66 GTO with no drivetrain. The owner of the junk yard was walking with us. I asked him how much for the hood. He said 10 bucks. I unbolted it and carried it a good half mile to my truck. I still have that hood in my shed.

[ta6point6]

I am lucky still have some good yards here in CO. I recently picked up these caution lights for 20. They were right next to a 74 Grand Prix that had some good stuff

[694.1]

A friend has several CDs full of yard photos from the late 70's into the early 90's.
After 30 minuets of his photos, I could stand it! It's like he didn't even aim the camera. Cars covered by shadows, camera pointing into the sun,
Honest to God, it was like someone gave the camera to a chimp!

My '69 was the recipient of salvage yard disks, wood wheel, AM-FM, stick change over- times were great!

[Goatracer1]

Bought my first GTO a 1965 in 1969 from a junk yard. Paid $650 for it. It was a 4 speed with tripower and nothing else. It was junked because the clutch was gone and it had faded paint.

[Formulabruce]

I "Drove" ( after a LOT of work) on it, in place, a 1967 Camaro RS home from a junk yard in 1980.
Best day of my life!! A friend has it now.

[KJB]

Is there a publication or listing of classic car salvage yards by location? I'm in Florida for the winter and it might be fun to see what I can locate here. Or if somebody knows of good Florida salvage yards for old cars, that would help. I'm in Port Charlotte but willing to travel.

[Mr Anonymous]

My thing was spending weekends while in KY (going to grad school no less), riding around the countryside with a Ford fanatic friend Larry - and hitting all the back roads and small towns anywhere east of I-75. Late 80s, early 90s, the stuff was still not that hard to find. This was before those GPS days, we had a Rand McNally KENTUCKY atlas, with each county being a full two pages. We used a highlighter to color the roads we'd checked. It even had large logging roads and coal mine roads on it.

We found quite a few staggering rarities, but more times than I care to remember, the car had belonged to a son that went to Vietnam and never came back. There were a bunch of sad stories. And a few crazy people.

I was the grad student driving a 1973 Dodge 250 pickup truck one semester, that brought an engine hoist to school. That Ford friend larry needed a 429SCJ (he found had been transplanted into a 77 F150) taken out and put in his Torino Cobra. I was not your typical student. I bought and sold cars, parts, and did work on the side to avoid borrowing money for school. Student loans? Never heard of them.

Stark's (Mike mentioned) is pretty much picked over, but in the summer - you will need a knife to cut thru the jungle, and a handgun to kill the snakes, a can of wasp spray, and a first aid kit for the rust wounds. Combined with the usual tools, count on a spine-killing backpack.

[justincampbell]

Back in the '90s, the smaller yards here in Iowa still had a fair bit of '50s/'60s stuff. A lot of it had already been picked over. But, there were still some goodies. Bridley's, just over the Iowa border into MN, had a ton of cool cars. I went there multiple times hoping to find treasure. I got a radio delete plate for my '56 Chevy for $5 when everybody advertising them was wanting $50.

The best ones were not salvage yards, but scrappers that retired and never cleared out the remainder of their scrap autos/parts. There were several of them near me yet in the '90s. My favorite was just 6 or 8 miles North of where I lived. The old man had run a scrap yard for many years and when he retired he still had 15 or 20 cars on his property that he just never did anything with. Back in the '70s, when my Dad was building our '56 Chevy the first time, he needed a bumper and saw a '56 among the junk cars at this guy's house. Dad talked to the guy and he said "Most people would've probably just stolen it. Since you talked to me, you can just have it." Dad told me that story a dozen times, at least. So, when I got to be driving age in the '90s, I borrowed Dad's truck and went to talk with the old man about possibly buying some parts. It was just the old man(Harold) and his dog at this point. He invited me in and we talked for an hour or two. I relayed the story that Dad had told me about getting the bumper all those years ago... that really made him smile. He invited me to go look around and let him know if there was anything I was interested in. I was more than happy to pay his asking prices. Bought '55 and '56 Chevy hoods for $5 each. Late '20s and early '30s headlight bars with lights for $25 each, brand new 8hp Briggs and Stratton motor that he had for years(still had the rope that you had to re-wrap every pull) for $50. The place is long gone now. The county bought the property and it was just timber last I saw.

[Dynoking]

Heres one. "The iron Triangle" from Flushing Queens, NY 1966.

[z man]

Passed there to get a 68 deck lid and another deck lid for my 70 mark 3 lincoln

[hurryinhoosier62]

Originally Posted by justincampbell

Back in the '90s, the smaller yards here in Iowa still had a fair bit of '50s/'60s stuff. A lot of it had already been picked over. But, there were still some goodies. Bridley's, just over the Iowa border into MN, had a ton of cool cars. I went there multiple times hoping to find treasure. I got a radio delete plate for my '56 Chevy for $5 when everybody advertising them was wanting $50.

The best ones were not salvage yards, but scrappers that retired and never cleared out the remainder of their scrap autos/parts. There were several of them near me yet in the '90s. My favorite was just 6 or 8 miles North of where I lived. The old man had run a scrap yard for many years and when he retired he still had 15 or 20 cars on his property that he just never did anything with. Back in the '70s, when my Dad was building our '56 Chevy the first time, he needed a bumper and saw a '56 among the junk cars at this guy's house. Dad talked to the guy and he said "Most people would've probably just stolen it. Since you talked to me, you can just have it." Dad told me that story a dozen times, at least. So, when I got to be driving age in the '90s, I borrowed Dad's truck and went to talk with the old man about possibly buying some parts. It was just the old man(Harold) and his dog at this point. He invited me in and we talked for an hour or two. I relayed the story that Dad had told me about getting the bumper all those years ago... that really made him smile. He invited me to go look around and let him know if there was anything I was interested in. I was more than happy to pay his asking prices. Bought '55 and '56 Chevy hoods for $5 each. Late '20s and early '30s headlight bars with lights for $25 each, brand new 8hp Briggs and Stratton motor that he had for years(still had the rope that you had to re-wrap every pull) for $50. The place is long gone now. The county bought the property and it was just timber last I saw.

There was a salvage yard in Blocher, IN (Scott Co.) like that. The old man that owned the yard wouldn’t sell you any car that he had, but he would sell you any part off any car. On one trip there, I found my dad’s ‘68 Catalina hardtop( he sold it twenty years earlier) along with several other Pontiacs. My last trip through Blocher I realized the yard was gone. I guess the old man died and his heirs sold all the cars for scrap.

[Goatracer1]

I guy I know bought the right to sell cars from a junk yard where the newest car was a 1964 Catalina wagon. He was given a time limit and all the cars had to be gone. The yard had been an old farm and was right on the Atlantic shore. The owner was blind, past away and the family wanted to subdivide the property. One barn was full of nothing but early HEMI's and Ford flatheads. There was so much good stuff because nobody had been there in decades.

[JerseyBoy]

I spent alot of time in junk yards in the mid 70's in eastern New Mexico and West Texas. There was an amazing amount of stuff out there. One thing I discovered early on Pontiac parts at the time did not demand a high price because they were not Chey or Ford parts! I found a set of long branch exhaust manifolds in the mud at one yard and I think I paid $5.00 for them! Another time I found a set of number 16 heads also just laying on the ground. I was able to purchase a hood tach and 400 hood for my firebird for not much money. Point is, at the time when you could find them, Pontiac parts were cheap, albeit not plentiful. Not so today!

[carbking]

KJB - Hemmings Motor News used to publish a book of different types of vendors, including salvage yards. Do not know the last date of publication.

As for personal experience, visited first salvage yard in 1964, to acquire a Cruise-O-Matic to replace the 2-speed dogmatic in my 1959 Ford.

After I got started in carburetors, visited MANY salvage yards in Missouri buying factory tripowers and dual quads; started this about 1966. Better than half of the dual quads would be intake, and front carb, and maybe fuel lines and linkage. Rear carb often removed. Of the tripowers, better than half would be intake, both ends, maybe linkage and fuel lines; the center carbs would be gone.

To the junk yard operator, the center on the tripower and the rear on the dual quads were salable as carburetors, as they had all circuits. The rest of the units (manifolds and dumper carbs) brought little more than scrap prices.

Most common found was J-2 Oldsmobile.

The 1957 J-2 carbs had the same castings as 1957 Pontiac, and could be recalibrated and different arms.

The 1958 J-2 carbs had the same castings as 1958 Chevrolet, and Pontiac, and again could be recalibrated and different arms installed.

Don't remember how many of the J-2's I found, but once sold about 40 bare manifolds to an Olds enthusiast for $5. each.

Dual quads were almost always El Dorado, with second largest group Chevy 409. Did find one 1956 Pontiac, and a couple of Packards.

For some reason, MoPar stuff was scarce in Missouri. Never saw a cross-ram until the 1970's at swap meets.

Same thing with FoMoCo. Bought one 430 L/M tripower, a couple of 390 tripower, and a couple of 1957 Fords with the Haystack Holleys.

Most common Pontiac tripower wa 1965; had a bunch of these.

Next most common Pontiac was 1960, with only the 1957 and 1958 being scarce.

Supply, demand, and pricing have changed a bit in 50 years.

Cars are the same; I bought two 1964 GTO's and four 1964 Tempests for a total of $1000 (one of the GTO's running sold to me for $100).

While I never had one, the cars that changed the most were the Shelby Mustangs. In 1971~1972 the used car lots put them on the back row, and put more desirable cars up front. Typically, pricing was about half of what the same year Mustang would bring, and then they would sit for weeks awaiting a buyer. The Mustang enthusiasts laughed at them as "all show and no go", as with the exception of the 1965 Hertz, they wouldn't keep up with the production Mustangs. And then something happened.........................and, no, I have no idea what; but suddenly the prices doubled, and doubled, and doubled, and .....

Anyway, thanks for starting the thread; spent a LOT of time in salvage yards, and have good memories.

Jon.

[GTOnly70]

Originally Posted by carbking

While I never had one, the cars that changed the most were the Shelby Mustangs. In 1971~1972 the used car lots put them on the back row, and put more desirable cars up front. Typically, pricing was about half of what the same year Mustang would bring, and then they would sit for weeks awaiting a buyer. The Mustang enthusiasts laughed at them as "all show and no go", as with the exception of the 1965 Hertz, they wouldn't keep up with the production Mustangs. And then something happened.........................and, no, I have no idea what; but suddenly the prices doubled, and doubled, and doubled, and .....


Jon.

Interesting, never heard that before.