Recycling A Little More Each Day

Get More Cash For Your Junk Car By Disassembling And Recycling It

If you have a junk car in your driveway and want to turn it into cash, you have two main options. You could sell the entire car to a junk car buyer, or you could disassemble it and scrap the pieces at a metal recycling facility. Choosing to disassemble the car would take more work, but you would probably get a lot more money for it than you would by selling the whole car at once. Here are some tips to help you know what parts to look for as you begin taking the car apart.

Aluminum

There are a variety of different parts on cars that might be made of aluminum, and aluminum is generally worth a lot more than steel. The first place to check on the car is the rims. Rims are commonly made of aluminum, but they can also be made of steel or plastic. Other parts on a car that might be made of aluminum include:

  • Cylinder heads
  • Mounting parts in the engine
  • Pipes and connections
  • Air conditioner lines
  • Engine blocks

Aluminum is not magnetic, so if a magnet sticks to a part in your car, it is not made of aluminum. Also, as you disassemble the aluminum parts, make sure you remove any steel attached to them, including small screws or nuts. If your aluminum has steel attached, the scrapyard may not pay you the full rate for aluminum.

Copper

Copper is typically one of the most expensive metals you can buy or sell, and you might find a few copper items in your car. To locate copper, look for a yellow color metal that is non-magnetic. You may find some copper on the battery terminals in your vehicle, on the alternator, or near the air conditioner.

Another place you might find copper is in the radiator. Radiators generally contain either copper or aluminum, and many scrapyards pay a certain rate per radiator.

Scrap Steel

After you remove all the valuable parts and materials from the vehicle, you could cut up the rest of it to sell as scrap steel. Scrap steel is typically the cheapest form of scrap you can sell, but you can use this for all the leftover pieces. As long as a part is made of steel, a scrapyard will buy it from you.

There are a variety of other parts you can also remove from junk cars to sell as scrap, and you can learn more about this by contacting a company like Harbour Metal Recycling Ltd that offers metal recycling services.


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