Oddities And Antiques In A Junkyard

I went to a junkyard yesterday in search of a few parts for my '97 3-series.  By this point, E36's are starting to pop up in junk yards with mechanical maladies or wreck damage, and the absolute cheapest way to get good parts is from a junk yard.  Sure, it's more of a hassle than finding the bit you need on eBay and clicking "buy it now" - you have to drive to the yard, pay a fee to get in, and find the kind of car you're looking for.  If it's got the part you want, most of the time you've gotta take it off yourself - unless it's already loose.

Turns out the only E36 there was a very early production '92 325i 4-door auto, a bright green and grey one with some wreck damage, and there wasn't anything I needed out of it.  Still, I brought my camera along, because half the fun is seeing some of the odd stuff that finds it's way into these scrapyards after living out it's useful life.  Lots of pictures below - take a trip through the rows of LKQ with me!

One doesn't think of a Chrysler LeBaron as desirable today, and it isn't.  But still, this is odd.  Here's a LeBaron GTC Turbo coupe, top of the line back in it's day - with a Chrysler 2.2 8v turbocharged engine and no body damage.  Even more odd- check out the mileage reading on the odometer!  Only 42,243 miles on this one.

The interior was still remarkably clean - considering the reprehensible build quality of 80's Chrysler's, that's saying something.  It's very 80's - angular brown plastic, plastic wood trim, orange needles, etc.  Surprised this one wasn't sporting a digital dashboard, actually.  I guess someone needed a door panel for their LeBaron!

There's a depressingly large Chrysler population in most junkyards.  LH-chassis cars (Intrepid, LHS, Eagle Vision, 300M, etc) are numerous, as are the cloud cars - Breeze, Stratus, etc.  Oh, also Neons and Minivans.  So many Chrysler minivans, some with straight bodies, makes me think the stories of Mopar transaxle issues are true - there must've been 10 Chrysler vans for every 1 Ford or GM Minivan.

  This gauge was above the HVAC controls in an 80's Dodge Daytona Turbo Z.  Before Chrysler's tie-in with Mitsubishis for the Diamond Star Motors (DSM) venture, the Daytona was Chrysler's sports coupe - this one sported the same non-intercooled 2.2L Turbo 8v motor as the LeBaron GTC did, but hooked to a five speed manual.  How many cars do you know that make 2.5psi of boost in a junkyard with half the engine taken apart?  Heh.

It's always fun peering into engines that are already somewhat disassembled.  Here's the rocker arms and valve springs on one cylinder head of a Mopar 318ci pushrod V8.  I think this was in a Dakota.  So much simpler and smaller than overhead cams!

Chrysler's LH cars are a lot more clever than people give them credit for.  For instance, why does a front wheel drive car have a longitudinally (front-to-back) mounted V6?  Well, some say it was a carryover from the Eagle Premier/Dodge Monaco.  This car without a home, which bounced around from dealer to dealer in it's US lifetime (it was really a Renault 25 with an AMC-designed interior, sold by AMC during their partnership with the French company) featured this unusual powertrain arrangement.  It was rumored that the LH cars were designed to accomodate front, rear, or all-wheel-drive: obviously a plan that never came to fruition.  Others say it was because it allowed the cab-forward styling with reasonable proportions.  Regardless, it's very odd.  This is a 2.7L V6 in a second-generation Intrepid.

Some of the stuff you find in a junkyard is just...  well, odd.  Some cars that finally wind up here were on their last legs.  So you get home-brew engineering - like this wooden front bumper, which someone wrote "The Frenchies!" on.

At some point, someone sat down and had a logical conversation with themselves.  I think it went like this.  "I want to paint my Saturn Coupe.  But not a boring color, like bright orange.  Or lime green.  No, I want to paint it sort of purple-black with a marble countertop finish.  This will be great.  Let me bust out my credit card.  Yes."

Look, Chameleon paint is cool on a TVR Tuscan.  It's even cool on a Mustang Cobra.  But perhaps color-changing paint is not the greatest choice for a 1996 Chrysler New Yorker.  That stuff is expensive.  This paint job probably cost twice the value of the junk Chrysler it was applied to.  Also, stock wheels?  Word.

I have to wonder why a race car like this Escort ZX2 wound up in a junk yard!  It clearly has a racing bodykit.  And those Z3 fenders are necessary to evacuate air pressure from the wheel wells at the 200+ mph this car used to see.  It must have thrown a rod through the block from the 400psi of boost it was running.

Some of the stuff you find in a junkyard is just straight creepy.  These pictures were affixed to one of the side windows of what I affectionately refer to as a "molester van" - an 80's Chevy Astro with three-tone brown paint, curtains on the rear windows, and no seats in the back.  I got a full-body shiver seeing this.  Who leaves their picture on the side of the van they sent to the junkyard?  Especially if you're a creepy-looking dude like this guy?  Why do you haunt my nightmares?

Here's a '78 Mercury Bobcat - the fraternal twin of the incendiary beloved Ford Pinto.  Unusual to see a car this old in a scrapyard, especially one that was such a piece of junk when it was new.  However, the interior is worth a picture all by itself.  It's all a bit much: the lipstick red dashboard, 14-color plaid seats, deep dish pizza steering wheel, baby vomit green carpet.  When people say "they don't make 'em like they used to," I think to myself 'thank god for small favors.'

And a 1974 Chevy El Camino, the largest generation of Chevrolet's car-truck hybrid, now rots away it's final days.  These leviathans were available with a 250ci I6, and V8's in 307, 350, 400, and 454ci.  No telling what used to be under the hood of this one.

This subsection could be titled "90's domestic cars in junk yards because of the bizarre, complicated engines with hard-to-find parts under the hood."  First example:  this 1994 Thunderbird SuperCoupe.  This was the top of the Thunderbird range, fitting above the 4.6L SOHC V8.  It used Ford's 3.8L "Cologne" V6 with an Eaton supercharger bolted to the top, delivering 230bhp and a meaty 330lb-ft of torque.  Someone took the snout off the supercharger on this one.

  Oddly enough, another 3.8L pushrod domestic V6 with an Eaton blower on it - this one's from General Motors, though.  This is under the hood of a Pontiac Grand Prix GTP sedan.  Surely someone can use this Eaton M90 blower on something!

Another engine GM half-baked then put into production, using their customers as lease-payment-making Beta testers: the 3.4L TDC ("Twin Dual Cam") 24v V6.  The LQ1 was GM's first "modern" V6, featuring dual overhead cams and four valves per cylinder.  It was a derivative of GM's 60° pushrod V6, so the design was something of a compromise, making it a royal pain in the ass to work on.  It was also taller than it needed to be and unreliable.  Things like having to remove the intake manifold to change the rear three spark plugs, 5 hour timing belt jobs, etc made it hated by owners and mechanics alike - they replaced it with the 3.8 Buick pushrod V6, which was simpler, a model of reliability, and torquier to boot.

The Oldsmobile "Shortstar" V6 - basically a Cadillac Northstar with two cylinders lopped off - was found under the hood of top-end Intrigues, and base-model 2nd-generation Auroras.  Not so much an unreliable heap, but just odd - this was actually a nice motor, a 90° even-fire V6 with chain driven cams rendered in all-aluminum.  It's totally unrelated to the 3.4 TDC above, and the 3.6L 24v V6 GM uses now.  Just odd.

Speaking of the Cadillac Northstar - these are thick on the ground in junkyards; especially the earlier Northstar powered Cadillacs (and the related 4.0L in the 1st-generation Aurora) before they fixed the issues with the head studs.  These were oil-burning, head-gasket popping nightmares past 100k miles.  Which is a shame, because it was GM's first mass-production (not counting the lotus-designed LT-5) high-tech V8, it goes like stink, and it sounds great.  Hey, if you need parts for an STS - you know where to look.

And so we move into the foreign cars.  It's interesting to observe some of the stuff that makes it's way here- there were no less than three 80's/early 90's Jaguar XJ sedans, like this 91 XJ6 Sovereign.  Not sure what was wrong with it, but you know how it is with old Jags - they nickel and dime you to death.

The classic Jag interior still looks good, even after 20 years and a final trip to the junk yard.  Wood, blue leather and chrome is a combo that needs to make a comeback, stat.  Wonder what puked on this one?

It's a shame to see old Infiniti Q45's in the junkyard.  They were stylish, innovative and powerful highway cruisers back in the day.  But perhaps the rumors of Japanese invincibility can be questioned; these are really expensive cars to keep running at high miles, with mechanical and electronic failures combining to make a car payment seem really attractive.

The number of 7-series BMW's in junkyards is another sure sign of just how dry an old top-end luxury car can suck your wallet after a decade or more.  This E32 735i had the venerable 3.5L single-cam six under the hood, but it's still dead.  Blow head gasket?  Failed transmission?  Who knows.  There was also an (E38) 740iL that had been nearly picked clean.

This (W140) Mercedes S420 had some crash damage - a shame; the paint still looked great and the interior was pretty clean as well.  I really want that 4.2L V8 so I can make an engine block coffee table out of it.

A straight W124 300E in a junk yard with a "For Sale" sign still in the back window - does it get any sadder than this?  The 3.0L six was all kinds of greasy, but the intergalactic mileage on the odometer (not unusual for a 90's E class) was a hint as to why it wound up here.

A relatively new Audi A6 3.0 Quattro, this one had most everything of value picked out of it already.  No crash damage, so potentially a crippling mechanical problem led it here.

And finally, a very odd Audi.  A 5000S Avant, 10 valve, manual.  These slope-backed wagons are an uncommon site here in the states; I haven't seen one in probably 5 years.  Sad that this fairly clean example had only 88k miles on the clock, too.

Gallery below!