At MackleCo our main focus is on salvaging good used automotive parts for resale, but what happens to the cars after we get out the usable parts? Our YouTube channel has some video showing the tear down of cars and our fun videos where we crush whats left, however in this series of posts we are going to take a closer look at some of the work that goes into recycling an automobile.
In this first post about sorting the scrap we are going to show the tear down of wheels. We like to try and sell wheels and tires all together as usable parts, however there are plenty of times where we just can’t sell the wheels so we process them down for recycling. There are two types of wheels found on vehicles alloy metal, which usually look nicer, and steel wheels that usually come with wheel covers. Alloy wheels are made up of an aluminum alloy and bring more money in scrap than standard steel wheels, but both are still recyclable.
One of our purchases this year to help with the sorting of our scrap material is a tire machine. In order to recycle a wheel most recycling centers require the tires to be removed due to the costly expense to dispose of tires. Let’s get started on the tire removal process.
The wheel we are working on in this example is a steel wheel. The first step is removing the valve stem core using a special valve stem core removal tool and letting the air out of the tire.
Once the air is let out of the tire we can take it over to the tire machine and start breaking it down. First up will be breaking the bead on both side of the wheel.
After the bead is broken we mount the wheel on the machine and pull off any wheel weights. The wheel weights are removed using a special pair of wheel weight pliers. The weights are made of lead so we collect them in a bin for recycling.
Finally using the tire spoon tool we can pop the tire off the rim and sort out the scrap. Once we have a good heavy load of wheels they get sent off to recycling. The tires will get disposed of with the local refuse service.
This is one of the many steps we take when recycling an automobile. Be sure to check back as we post more tear downs and sorting of scrap.