How to Scrap a Car and What Scrap Means
Are you wondering how to scrap a car? When selling a car for scrap, there is a lot more than one might expect going into it. You might think you just drive it up to the scrapyard, the scrapper weighs it, gives you a quote and you get cash. Well, it can work like that, but you’ll get pennies compared to what you can get. For example, the numerous regulations involved, the preparation that the seller has to do, the parts of the car that can’t be scrapped, the difference between ferrous and non-ferrous metals; all our things that people who want to scrap their car need to keep in mind.
What is Scrap Metal?
Let’s talk about what exactly is scrap. Scrap metal is any kind of metal that has been discarded, used, or exceeded its life of usefulness. These pieces of metal are melted down and recycled to be used in other objects.
Who Buys Scrap?
There are many authorized and licensed scrapyards that engage in scrap metal recycling. These recyclers use scrap metal indexes that rise and fall much like the stock market. It’s important to keep this in mind when receiving an offer from a scrapyard. Junkyards are also interested in scrap metal quite often. You can read more about junkyards here!
How to Scrap a Car for the Most Money
When scrapping your car, you want to know how to get the most money out of it. There are a few things you can do that will increase the amount of money you can get out of your car, but you better have some time, tools, and a lot of experience dismantling vehicles.
What’s the Process?
Disassemble the Car Piece-By-Piece
Does this sound as hard as it is? Yes, well it’s even harder than that. The key to this is to ensure that the pieces you are disassembling are still in decent condition. No sledgehammers: you need sockets, wrenches, pliers, and the like to take your car apart.
Sort Pieces for Ferrous Metal Recycling and Non-Ferrous Metal Recycling
The next important step is to sort your metal car pieces by ferrous and non-ferrous metal. This can easily be done with a magnet; ferrous metals are magnetic and non-ferrous metals are not magnetic. This seems like it would be easy, but you’ll be surprised how many pieces are in a car.
What Are the Most Valuable Parts on a Car to Scrap?
Scrap parts with the most value can vary depending on the what metals are in demand at that time. Catalytic converters tend to be the fastest selling piece on a car because of the rare metals used to reduce pollution from combustion engines. Some other parts that have decent scrap value are pieces made of cast iron. In newer cars, the most common cast iron pieces of a car are the brake rotors. Older cars can be made entirely of cast iron, so it depends entirely on your car. Alternators, car starters, and used car batteries also have some scrap value because of the metals used inside of them.
What Can and Cannot Be Recycled
While we discussed some of the parts of your car that can be recycled, there are some things you’ll have to do other parts of your car before a scrapyard will give you top dollar for your scrap metal.
Clean Your Scrap
Scrap parts that have been sitting for a long time, are caked with dirt, excessively rusty, vandalized, or etc. need to be cleaned so that they are able to be melted down immediately. The less work the scrapper must do to prepare your scrap for recycling, the more money you’ll get to recycle your car parts for cash.
What Can’t Be Sold to Scrapyards
While just about anything is recyclable, that doesn’t mean that scrappers are going to have any interest giving you money for it. These things are not recyclable and will get thrown away if you try to sell it to a scrap recycler.
Plastic
Yep, all that car plastic is going to waste. Not to mention it’s going to end up in a landfill somewhere for the next thousand years or so.
Wood
Scrapyards have no interest in organic material in the slightest. Although, it is highly unlikely that you wood anywhere in your car unless your car was built in the early 1900s.
Radioactive Materials
While many radioactive materials are technically metal, they’re dangerous and scrapyards have no way to contain radiation from the materials. Again, we highly doubt there will be any radioactive materials in your car.
Lead and Mercury
If you’re wondering what metals cannot be recycled at scrapyards, these two would be your answer. While these metals could be in your car, their dangerous side effects when handling them make them very hard to recycle. Only specialty recyclers can handle these metals and scrapyards won’t even attempt to recycle these materials.
Why Scrapping Your Car Isn’t the Best Option
When you decided to scrap your car, you may have not realized just how much effort it was going to take to get your car apart. After hours and hours of disassembly, you’re not even sure of the scrap value of your car by the time you’re done. Scrap metal prices today are probably not going to be the same as tomorrow. In the end, you probably would have been better off selling your car to a company that gives you cash without any of the efforts and offers free junk car removal! You can read more about junk car removal here! That’s where CashForCars.com comes in.
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Go here for any further questions about how to sell your car!
