Don’t dump your old beater just yet — with a few pointers and a bit of know how, you can potentially salvage hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Cars can almost feel like another family member. Cars take us to key moments in our lives, ferry us back and forth to work, protect our families during long journeys. Heck, if the back seat was spacious enough, some of us were even conceived in a car.
Sadly, nothing lasts forever, and most cars are ultimately destined for the scrapyard as their final destination. But if you’re smart and know your way around your vehicle, your car can be of service, even as scrap. Cars are complex machines made up of hundreds of parts, many of which are quite valuable, even if the car itself is a jalopy.
Before dropping your car off at the junkyard and calling it a day, check and see if your car has individual parts that could be sold for cash, which could go into the purchase of your next car. Think about how good hunters are supposed to use every piece of the animal’s corpse. Even in death, a good car has plenty of pieces that are worth money to pawn shops, junk dealers, and scrap collectors. These are 13 of the most valuable parts from your junk car. Hubcaps
Watch any old gangster movie, and chances are, the criminal subject of the film got his start stealing hubcaps. It’s the classic gateway crime. It’s a quick and easy way to steal something and show the world that you’re a «bad boy» with no respect for authority. That being said, juvenile delinquents don’t steal hubcaps just for the fun of it. They do it to get some money in their pocket. But also for the fun of it. (SlashGear does not condone stealing hubcaps, no matter how fun or profitable it may or may not be)
These days, most hubcaps are made of plastic and aren’t very valuable. But older cars had metal hubcaps that were just about worth their weight in scrap metal. They’re not going to make you rich or anything, but if your car has metal hubcaps, be sure to sell them off before sending your old junker off to that great junkyard in the sky. They’re easy to remove and scrap metal is always in demand somewhere or another. which is probably why they switched to cheap, plastic hubcaps in the first place.Car Seats
When we think of car parts that suffer from wear and tear, we think of under-the-hood components like the engine or undercarriage parts like catalytic converters and exhaust pipes, but one overlooked car component is the seat. Unless you’re some kind of Cirque du Soleil enthusiast, whenever you’re driving the car, you’re sitting in the driver’s seat. Likewise, passenger seats are always seeing action, either from human butts or grocery bags. Thus, there’s always a market for automobile seat replacements.
You can get more than $25 or so for a car seat in reasonable condition, so the more seats you have, the more money you can earn. Though for a part like this, you might be better off finding someone who could benefit from your own used parts and go together to a mechanic who can swap the seats, cutting out the junkyard middleman entirely. However, if that’s not an option, a junkyard will still have you ending the day with more cash in your pocket than when you woke up, and that’s always a good thing.Catalytic Converter
Catalytic converters were mandated in all American vehicles as part of the 1970s crackdown on unregulated harmful automobile emissions. This one part significantly improves the carbon footprint of any automobile to which it’s attached. Getting into just how a catalytic converter works is beyond the scope of this story, but rest assured, it’s a fancy piece of hardware, and if it’s fancy, it’s expensive.
Catalytic converters contain precious metals like platinum and palladium, which are worth more than gold. On an old, broken-down car, the catalytic converter alone could be worth more than the entire vehicle combined. When a car is at the end of its lifespan, selling off the catalytic converter can put a few hundred bucks in your pocket, or more if it’s a particularly old model that contains more platinum and other rare metals. Catalytic converters are also a common target for thieves, so be careful where you park, especially if you’re driving a vintage vehicle.Windshield Wiper Arms
Every part of a scrapped car is worth something. Even something as seemingly insignificant as the windshield wiper arm can be worth a few bucks if it’s in reasonably fresh condition. If you haven’t changed windshield wiper blades in a while, it’s probably not worth much more than garbage, but if they’re specialized models that have suffered minimal wear and tear, you might be able to get a maximum of $65 for each one, but that’s at the very high end. You’re more likely to get less than $5 per arm on most models. Still, better than just throwing it in the trash, right?
Windshield wiper blades are something of a wildcard. They might be worth virtually nothing, or they might, surprisingly, be worth more than you thought.
