Scrappers

corktina

Anyone been watching this on the BBC?
About a scrapyard in Manchester or somewhere. Quite interesting but not enough details of what they do for me.
Interesting statistics...in a year they salvaged something like 7500 catalytic converters... that's some throughput of cars!
It seemed to me that they ripped the cars apart for the pig iron and didn't actually bother saving many things such as doors and the skip full of alloys off to be melted down raised my eyebrows a bit!

rusty_racer94

I agree with you on that one, they're more about recycling metal than salvaging cars for parts. Ripping out the engines, a huge pile of radiators and a lot of profit wasted in the form of not stripping the car as much as they could.

TrailerBob

A lot of these recyclers just want quick return, so max profit from minimum effort. The more you strip a car, the more it costs in labour, storage, etc. There's a lot of work stripping a car for all useable parts to sell on.

corktina

they were removing suspension parts with a consaw at one stage!

Markcheese

Probably more money in the metal than the parts,once you strip for parts you have to store and catelogue them, as well as sell them,if it's a common car and a commonly failing part spurious pats are cheap... If it's not you could be holding stock for years....

corktina

I saw no evidence of fluid recovery...just rip the lump out and go in with the machine for the loom and crush the rest. I would omagine the engine s wouldn't be much use having been ripped out like that

goz83

I'll check it out on youtube

YouTookMyName

How many second hand parts places in the UK? Too much competition.

Gordon

They do also sell parts and export engines. http://m.metrosalvage.co.uk

dgt

The cars are depolluted, there is a designated shed where about 4 cars are done at any one given time. All yards have a depollution facility/policy of some sort

Most yards are the same, scrap metal has to be turned around quickly with the most valuable/commonly asked parts left to one side. This is so that space doesn't get wasted or the yard doesn't get clogged. Anything I send to the yard gets fired in the bailer as there would be nothing of any use or its an undesireable car

Guy:Incognito

The amount of stuff that goes to waste in scrapyards is unreal. I drop down to the one in Kilcock every now and then for a root. There huge amounts of cars with nice leather interiors ruined because the car is chucked outside with the windows open or gone and they get destroyed.

I'd have thought thered be money to be made saving stuff like that.

dgt

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

The amount of stuff that goes to waste in scrapyards is unreal. I drop down to the one in Kilcock every now and then for a root. There huge amounts of cars with nice leather interiors ruined because the car is chucked outside with the windows open or gone and they get destroyed.

I'd have thought thered be money to be made saving stuff like that.

Yards just can't keep saving stuff like that. I'm in the same situation for example I had a fairly rare blue set of 156 leathers and cards, not a mark. I was going to fire them in a skip until I was contacted by someone who wanted them. Same goes for wheels, I had a collection for sale with the outburst of winter tyres, not one sold. Then I had whingers whining about why I scrapped the lot, well you didn't buy them when I had them advertised :rolleyes:

My point is saving leads to lack of space and especially when its your own house, you just can't afford to save everything no matter what it is

corktina

dgt wrote: »

The cars are depolluted, there is a designated shed where about 4 cars are done at any one given time. All yards have a depollution facility/policy of some sort

Most yards are the same, scrap metal has to be turned around quickly with the most valuable/commonly asked parts left to one side. This is so that space doesn't get wasted or the yard doesn't get clogged. Anything I send to the yard gets fired in the bailer as there would be nothing of any use or its an undesireable car

I've no doubt there is, but it would have been good TV to have high-lighted it, particularly as the yard was swimming in water most of the time from what I could see

goz83

Can someone post the links to the shows? I found episode 1 & 3, but can only find an advert for episode 2 and can't see any other episodes. BBC won't let me use it

fmcg_scribe

corktina wrote: »

Anyone been watching this on the BBC?
About a scrapyard in Manchester or somewhere. Quite interesting but not enough details of what they do for me.
Interesting statistics...in a year they salvaged something like 7500 catalytic converters... that's some throughput of cars!
It seemed to me that they ripped the cars apart for the pig iron and didn't actually bother saving many things such as doors and the skip full of alloys off to be melted down raised my eyebrows a bit!

Have seen bits of a few episodes and agree that some "mad stuff" has been shown.

As a few other posts have pointed out, there's a big difference between scrap yards and breakers yards that cannibalise cars for parts that can be sold on.

Breakers yards are very useful to people running older cars where new replacement parts are no longer available or are costly. I recall that one of my uncles used to own an MG Midget convertible and he rarely drove past a breaker's yard without stopping and that was in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

Catalytic converters is an interesting one. Apparently, they contain a large range of precious metals that are increasingly difficult or costly to obtain.