I guess junkyard A-bodies are all gone now

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TylerW

TylerW

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As a big fan of self-service junkyards, I maintain access to the inventories of the chains around here(Pull-A-Part, LKQ) plus I also use Row52.com. I'm pretty certain I have not seen a '67-76 A-body in the yard in at least 8 years.

I still find an occasional F-body and the M-bodies are still around but I guess the A-body supply has dried up or they are being caught by the flippers first.
 
I'm Northern California, and out here they are called Pick-N-Pull, self serv wrecking yards.
Same thing out here in the way of old cars in the Chrysler rows.
With all the Pick-N-Pull's within about 180 miles of here, there are currently only 2 A body's to be found.
And then it's even hard to find a Diplomat, or 5th Avenue, the last of the rear wheel drives.
Time has marched on.
Now 2016, and not the 60's or 70's any longer.
 
TylerW said:
As a big fan of self-service junkyards, I maintain access to the inventories of the chains around here(Pull-A-Part, LKQ) plus I also use Row52.com. I'm pretty certain I have not seen a '67-76 A-body in the yard in at least 8 years.

I still find an occasional F-body and the M-bodies are still around but I guess the A-body supply has dried up or they are being caught by the flippers first.
Click to expand...
 
There are none within a 50 mile radius of me. The only thing I find are Diplomats,80's vans/trucks and once in a while a cordoba
 
South of Atlanta is the same. The last /6 I saw was an Aspen a couple years ago.

Sedanman I'm from Park Forest, when I was a kid I'd drive up to Circus Auto Parts in Blue Island. Once in a while if I really needed something I'd go next door to ABC and let them pull something for me.
 
There aren't any in the chain type yards around Omaha anymore. We still have a few mom n pop yards outside of town but those cars have all been laying in the mud rusting four years now.
 
Yeah it's changed a lot in just the last few years. When I first got into A-bodies about 8 years ago you could get stuff out of the yards here in California pretty regularly. I pulled a bunch of the FMJ disk brake conversions, a few C-body 8 3/4's, all kinds of stuff. Then it started to slow down. Even as late as a three years ago I was able to pull an entire fold down seat conversion out of a '73 Duster that was at a local Pick-N-Pull, that's how I converted my Duster over to a fold down seat How To: Fold down seat conversion. I've even pulled entire front clips off of a '71 Dart and another '72 Dart in the local yards, but again, that was almost 4 years ago now. In the last couple of years things have really dried up. I saw a '71 Scamp in one of the yards near here last year, but it was a /6 drum/drum car that looked like it had been pulled off the bottom of a lake. It was so rusted it was actually falling apart, very few usable parts on that one for anything.

It's a bummer that a source of cheap parts is drying up, but I think it's kind of a good thing too. It means that people aren't just scrapping A-bodies anymore. Sure, they're still being parted out, but it's become pretty infrequent that someone just hauls even a partially complete car to a yard for scrap prices.
 
Yea, I remember in the 80's when I used to go to the local yards and A bodies were everywhere. Parts were dirt cheap. 30 years ago, at 18, I walked in the local yard and pulled Duster doors, fenders, hood, and trunk lid before paint. Just to get the straightest pieces. Any interior part was available. Time passes so fast.
 
They can still be found in my neck of the woods, and I can number about 30 A bodies alone!! I'm working on bringing them home one by one, but it's a battle sometimes to free them from their graves!! Nothing to rebuild, just parts cars tho!!
 
There is a local yard 20 minutes from me with 2 narrow body's in there. Go up Nort to Wisconsin and I can name 3 or 4 within a couple hours that still have a few A-Body's with some good parts left. Granted the sheet metal is pretty much gone, but there are a lot of other parts still on them.
 
They are getting sold on sites like craigslist before they make it to the yard. Just today I talked to a guy that bought a 75 dart sport for 500. He bought it to part it out, disk brakes, good interior, etc. The problem is he can make more for parts than someone will offer him for it. It would have been a great project car. He woudn't take 1000 for it cause he could make more off the parts. I have seen alot of local cars to me meet this fate. Better get you a car to build now before your paying 20,000 for a slant 6 project in 10 years.
 
There's a mopar specifically junk yard in the high Desert here in so Cal, havent been there myself need to go though. His name is Darrel, the salvage yard is in Phelan Ca, someone posted his number in a different forum 760-963-7809. Can call and see what all he has and think he ships.
 
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slantflat said:
South of Atlanta is the same. The last /6 I saw was an Aspen a couple years ago.

Sedanman I'm from Park Forest, when I was a kid I'd drive up to Circus Auto Parts in Blue Island. Once in a while if I really needed something I'd go next door to ABC and let them pull something for me.
Click to expand...

Those yards are still there but they never have anything anymore either. I hit yards from Milwaukee,Hammond IN,Rockford, Blue Island and everything in between and nothing. I hit 4 yards in Rockford yesterday and they hadn't seen even a Diplomat in years
 
I find em here, but the sources are drying up fairly fast. Been hitting the yards and getting goodies while i still can.
 
I haven't seen an A body around my area in quite a few years. Although, a few days ago, the pick n pull off of commercial in San Jose has a 65 dart. It's pretty much just a shell though. I think it still had the rear seats....might be gone now.
 
Cant find em in the bone yards cuz we are still driving them. Bet you can find an a$$ load of Chevys though.
 
Where I'm at, there seems to be a couple folks who jump on any A body that actually does show up in the self serve scrap yards as soon as the fork lift drops them off and pilfer any and all marketable parts off of them only to throw them up on ebay and craigslist for twice as much as what they paid. I stopped going to the pick-a-part yards years ago for this reason alone.
 
once in a great while one will surface from an independent that had a few old cars on the property and not so much a bonafide wrecking yard...maybe in an attempt to clear the property due to encroaching yard nazis....catching these guys before going to the scrapper is the key.....at the time being...scrap metal is down and I have seen a few cars surface trying to generate interest as a project for that extra tad of money now lost with the current price of steel..but yes...anything of age is about gone due to the big push especially in my area of folks who pushed twice in the area to snag all non running cars for the scrapper..
 
All the tweakers and meth heads looking for a buck. I have seen some pretty good project iron, and parts iron run across the scales at my local pine street salvage when steel was high. FYI pine street salvage is not a junkyard. Its a straight up scrap yard. They grab a.complete car with the magnet, and drop it into the centrifuge. The good thing is they sell by weight only. My buddy went in there, dropped off a load of scrap, then had em pluck a rusty and crusty 354 hemi irrigation pump motor off a pile of scrap metal, and onto his trailer. Plus he found a really straight 63 chevy pickup grille. Truck and trailer weighed going in, weighed going out. I think after all was said and done he payed $30 scrap weight for the engine, and the grille as it weighed a bit more than what he left there. LOL. The grille he had chromed for his 63 C/10, and the hemi he sold at a swap meet.
 
most of the yards owned by the old timers, retired, crushed back when scrap was so high, the dopers ran the back roads looking for scrap of any kind ( old mopars included) back when scrap was high , ,,,,,,, there are still old mopars out there in the sticks hiding in ditches, behind barns and the owners thing they are all restorable and worth big $$ too.
but, there are more cars/parts around here than buyers looking to spend $$. this area ( missouri) is not back East. just not the number of people and amount of $$...
most cars /parts are in the hands of enthusists. waste of time to look for hardly any mopar in any general salvage yard anymore.
 
Best to find them before they hit the scrap yard, picked up this 68 Valiant last year for $ 250 Canadian ....had it running in an hour.

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Wild Cats still have a few. This was taken about three years ago. also a place about 30 miles from me but mostly early A's

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