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Lock up your cats!

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  • #16
    Re: Lock up your cats!

    Scrap is so high, any metal left lying around here is subject to growing legs. Last summer I bought and scrapped a few cars that I wanted the engines from, and learned how salvage yards operate these days.
    Car I stripped, just a body basically on a frame, no suspension, interior, drivetrain, rearend, weighed 2400 lbs. =$160.00
    Junk batteries I had laying around=$5.00 a piece
    Stack of old radiators, (5) minus the steel brackets=$30.00
    A small 1/2 truck load of aluminum scrap, clean, no steel or rubber attached=$71.00
    Bent aluminum wheels I had accumulated=$8.00 each
    A few large cats I pulled out of the dumpster at work (before the midnight auto crew got them) $40-60 a piece.

    The yards take the old gas, coolant, etc and recycle it or use it themselves, and if they're paying this much, how much are they getting for it when they turn it around and sell it.

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    • #17
      Re: Lock up your cats!

      Not to hijack the thread, but I work for an excavating company that used to do sewer and water work. We kept a supply of manhole covers, grates, flanges etc. at our shop, not exactly in plain sight but convenient to access when necessary. The stuff began to disappear on Friday nights/Saturday mornings, just prior to the scrap yard down the street opening. We were regularly patrolled by the local sheriff's department, yet no one was ever caught.

      Now this stuff is heavy and brings a pretty penny. You can't tell me that the knuckleheads running the scrap yard had no clue that that fresh, unused cast iron sewer related stuff didn't come from our yard less than a mile away. What a waste of perfectly good material, sold for pennies on the dollar. The same yard advertises 'top dollar paid for used catalytic converters'. Boy, there's incentive if I've ever seen it.

      We've gotten pretty heavily involved with house demolitions now. Any structural steel we pull out of a house is hauled away, by our trucks, to the scrap yard that day. Even though our sites are in residential areas and access gates are locked at the end of the day, any left over steel manages to disappear overnight, especially on the weekends. So much for neighborly observation.

      The scrappers are vultures to be sure.

      Now back to our regularly scheduled program.........................

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      • #18
        Re: Lock up your cats!

        I forgot this one until just now. Last summer, I was at work when the power went out all of a sudden. Now that's not that uncommon during a storm, with all the trees around here, but it was a pretty nice day. Come to find out, two idiots broke into a transformer station nearby and cut out a couple of sections of thick copper wiring. They pulled a few sections out before getting electrocuted. They got away for a few days, but the police were quoted in the newspaper as saying they could tell someone had been seriously injured at the scene. I wonder what they found? Was it the smell of burning hair and flesh? Dummies ended up getting caught eventually.

        There is a used car dealer in town that is where a Chrysler Plymouth dealership was years ago. Closed in the early '80s. They had a barn they were going to tear down to make way for a new storage building, and left the door open with a sign that said everything free hanging out front. I drove by and saw a light up Mopar sign like the ones that hung out front on a pole. I pulled in and loaded it in my truck. A few guys were grabbing all the doors, fenders, trunklids, old seats, and old jacks, etc. One of them says to me, Hey, you should have been here earlier, there was tons of hoods with scoops and air cleaner assy's and engines, transmissions, etc. I asked who got the stuff, he told me a guy loaded it all on a flatbed and hauled it away. By the description of the truck I figured out who it was. The guy makes his living running scrap to the yards. Who knows what got scrapped, lost forever. This happened last August.

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        • #19
          Re: Lock up your cats!

          well, you can try and lock up our cats,
          but they are usually pretty un-cooperative:




          This one eats my Barn Cats!

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          • #20
            Re: Lock up your cats!

            A couple years ago my Dad saw on his way to work where some guys had tried to steal a giant roll of Steel off the back of a trailer. You know they got to be heavy when you see an 18-wheeler only carrying two at a time, and always mounted over the axles (40,000lbs each?). Anyways, apparently these guys thought they could just cut the straps and roll it into the back of a toyota truck....... Yeah they got it to roll off the back of the trailer and into the back of the truck, effectively putting what remained of the back of the truck two feet into the ground :o I would have like to have been there at the moment the roll hit the truck to see the looks on their faces :D
            Escaped on a technicality.

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            • #21
              Re: Lock up your cats!

              Originally posted by CJTORINO
              well, you can try and lock up our cats,
              but they are usually pretty un-cooperative:




              This one eats my Barn Cats!
              Dude... is that a real wild mountain lion? Holy crap!
              Cheap, slow, half-assed: Pick three

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              • #22
                Re: Lock up your cats!

                Originally posted by Rebeldryver
                As for the cats. I hear tell that the Toyota ones have platinum in them. With the price of platinum these days, I may steal a few myself. My neighbor had her muffler ripped off her pickup while at work one day. Must've been a real bozo to steal a stock muffler. Since this town is full of illegals with little or no money; it wouldn't surprise me that some might steal the parts they feel are too expensive to buy legally
                You have the right to remain silent but............................ ;D

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                • #23
                  Re: Lock up your cats!

                  Somebody was doing the cordless sawsall/catalytic thing last year in Buffalo.Pretty much everyday there's some sort of scrap related theft reported in the Buffalo News.People removing wiring,copper/brass plumbing stuff from vacant buildings or construction sites.It seems like no matter where you are,unless you are standing guard with a 12 gauge,someone will try to rip you off.

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                  • #24
                    Re: Lock up your cats!

                    Seven cats were sawed off my customers cars last week. They were locked up in a fenced in lot, and the bastard cut through the fence.. Took seven converters and some stereo equipment and I found two gas caps removed. >
                    Watched him on video recorder for a couple of minutes. Stupid ass me had an old flag pole laying in the lot. He picks it up and pushes the video camera straight up in the air so I couldn't watch him anymore.
                    Another local shop had 20 stolen the same week.

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                    • #25
                      Re: Lock up your cats!

                      Damn, does insurance cover that?
                      Escaped on a technicality.

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                      • #26
                        Re: Lock up your cats!

                        Yep. One is a 2002 Ford E-250 van. CarX says the cat has to come from Ford and will be around $1000 to repair.
                        He got:
                        02 Ford E-250
                        96 Ford Contour
                        98 Plymouth Voyager
                        00 Ford Explorer
                        96 Ford Probe
                        02 Ford Windstar
                        98 Dodge Ram 1500
                        Most will need "Y" pipes and 02 sensors too.

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                        • #27
                          Re: Lock up your cats!

                          Noticed that most of these on your list were fords infor repairs !

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                          • #28
                            Re: Lock up your cats!

                            I better not leave it at that all night someone might think I'm serious . I actually have one 78 Ford truck in the drive way. And no it doesn't have a converter. Not sure if the sixes in trucks had them then . Back to our regularly scheduled program .

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                            • #29
                              Re: Lock up your cats!

                              I have two road drags that I use to grade the dirt roads in my area....one is only about 200 pounds the other is well over half a ton (two 12' lengths of 110 pound rail welded to a big steel A frame). Two guys in a rusty Ford came down my dead end road, stopped. One got out, gave it a kick, fiddled with the 10' length of heavy chain attached to the end. about then both my Dogs came charging across the yard barking like crazy. He jumped back in and they took off. I hooked both drags up to my tractor and dragged 'em into the yard. Later on that night, the infrared alarm on my gate went off, the Dogs went off, the security light over the gate went on and an old rusty Ford hauled ass back down the road. Wish I had gotten a plate number >

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