Have not had much luck at garage sales this summer, but today I up and bought some stuff.   In the employee parking lot saw a pickup stacked high with old mowers, chainsaws, bicycles, everything disassembled, rough looking.   Later in the am I located the owner and asked what he was planning to do with his load.   He was taking to the metal salvage place at noon.   So I asked if i could take out what I wanted, show him, and pay his price, wisely he agreed.   You see there was a small red metal tool box, carry around type, yeah the kind that searches me out.   It had tools in it, rusty ones, part of a 3/8 drive set, 1/2 inch drive set, a few wrenches, hammer etc.   There was a complete 6hp Tecumseh, that felt like it had good compression, and is one of those odd ones with power output pulley on the crank and on the cam.   Grabbed the green JD mower gas tanks too.  Stacked on top was a Sears snowblower with hardly any paint worn off, engine felt solid too.  So I go load this stuff, finding at the bottom a numerical drill bit index over half full, rusty from being in the rain.  Then he can't come up with a price, so I held out some bills, he nodded and took em.  Asked why he was tossing the tools?   Well they're rusty, and not metric, and look bad.  Go figure. 

His loss, your gain!
The throw-away attitude astounds me sometimes.

It's amazing what people throw away!  I've picked up some good stuff that way too, can't hurt to ask.

Good for you, john.  The excitement of the dig is lovely.

Years ago I worked in a wrecking yard in Napa California for my good friend Brian. Down the road about 3 miles was the scrap metal yard where we sold our scrap metal. The owner of the scrap yard would let us poke around in the piles and barrels of scrap. Some of the better stuff i found was a 1964 Chevy 340 HP 409 engine, a WWII Cadillac tank engine, a model A Ford transmission, a 1932 Ford v8 carb, a set of Ford factory 406 castiron headers, a set of Fenton castiron headers for 216/235 Chevy engines and many old car related parts. I use to be a big old car freak back in the 1970s. I traded the 409 engine to my friend at the wrecking yard in 1979 and he recently pulled it out of the barn and sold it as a rebuildable core to a engine rebuilding shop for $2,000.


EvilDr235