If you have a car that you've kept for many years with an odometer that's turned around a few too many times, you may be looking at your options. While it's not quite a rust bucket as yet, you realise that its useful life is limited and may be considering all your options at this time. Should you try and break it apart to sell individual parts, or should you take the vehicle as it is to a scrap merchant? What is the best approach?
Retained Value
If your vehicle is still in reasonable working condition, many of the individual mechanical components may still have some value. For example, a radiator may be composed of brass and copper (although more modern-day versions are typically aluminium). If so, then the radiator itself could fetch some money in that particular market.
The catalytic converter fitted within the exhaust system could also be valuable. You may notice that brazen thieves steal these components by simply cutting them out of the victim's car in broad daylight. They do this because the converter has precious metals like palladium and platinum within. These metals are used to reduce harmful gases, but they can fetch some good money on the open market.
The Bigger Picture
Yet, before you think about removing individual parts, remember that you still need to get rid of the entire car, one way or the other. You will need to carefully consider how much time and effort you have to put into removing those parts and finding someone willing to buy them. Furthermore, if you stripped a lot of the "valuable" parts away, you may not find someone who is willing to take the rest.
Trading Your Car in for Cash
Scrap car merchants may certainly take the vehicle from you in its current condition. After all, this is their bread-and-butter operation, and they have an existing market to supply. They will remove the individual parts and either make them available for other road users or send them for recycling to the appropriate destination. They can then crush the rest of the vehicle and separate the different metals to get full value from the entire car.
Weighing up Your Options
If you decide to take individual parts off, this will undoubtedly affect not just how much the scrap metal merchant will give you but whether they take the vehicle at all. Consequently, you should get in touch with them first and see how much they are likely to offer. Then, you can make your own decision based on the value of your time, the hassle and other factors.
Contact a local scrap dealer to learn more about scrapping cars for cash.