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So we have dove into some of the car component tear downs and how we sort everything out but what about the whole car? Well here is a quick rundown of a Honda Accord that has seen better days. We picked the car up complete and still rolling however it seems the fuel pump went out and it wasn’t getting fuel to stay running. Fun to make it run on ether, but it wont run for long. Hondas are great reliable cars that never quit why not toss a fuel pump in and send this one for a few million more miles? Well as we looks at the car closer it just wasn’t worth fixing.

You can see the black tape holding the front bumper on which is just the beginning of this poor cars misfortune. The clips that hold the bumper on are broken hence the tape. The inner fender is also missing… on both sides. Minor details, but as we investigated the car had a hokey at best respray job. There were 4 mismatched tires that were bald adding to allure of this beauty. The interior was rough, it was littered with cigarette butts and ashes all over which also brought along a smokey smell.

Let’s get back to the re-spray job… why was this car painted? Well it turns out car must have been side swiped in some fashion. The left driver’s side doors were silver inside meaning they must have come from a different car. To add to the body work the rear quarter panel had a fair amount of shoddy Bondo work done to it. The right passenger side of the car didn’t have much notable either. The doors were original, we think, but they had dents and scrapes. Needless to say this poor car has seen better days and is off to scrap!

So what do we do with it other than scrap it? Well there are still plenty of usable parts that we can test and check. The tail light lenses weren’t broken or leaking water, the window switches work, the steering column switches work, sun visors are still usable the list goes on. We check and test everything we can and anything that is working gets saved to be hopefully sold on eBay. As we tear the car apart we throw all the unusable parts, miscellaneous nuts, bolts, screws and more into the dump trailer to head to scrap. We sort out and save any non-ferrous metals such as wiring harness, cast aluminum brackets, the radiator and AC condenser, electric motors and more.

Once we have the car all broken down we are left with an empty shell that gets sent to recycling. To save space in the trailer and get the most out of our space we cut the roof pillars and smash the roof down into the body and compact the shell as much as possible. We do this with the Bobcat and then we use the Bobcat to put the shell in the dump trailer. Below is a quick video of the process and you can see there isn’t much left of the car that hasn’t been yanked apart.

Crushing what’s left of the Honda Accord.

We will keep capturing more of the process as we go so keep tuned. We have a few more candidates that are headed to scrap here shortly!

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So we tore apart some transfer cases and a motor that we just couldn’t find a new home for, but what about transmissions? They are a little more tedious to get apart, but they hold all kinds of neat bits and pieces for scrap art. This tear down we have 2 front-wheel drive transmissions (FWD), one from that glorious Ford Taurus we wrote about a little while back and a rear-wheel drive (RWD) transmission.

The rear wheel drive transmissions are a little easier to get apart than the front wheel drive, but keep in mind these are going to scrap, so we can get out a big hammer if needed! The worst part about transmissions is no matter how well you drain them or try to pump the fluid out, it always seems like there is an infinite amount hiding inside. The valve bodies are notorious for hiding a bunch of fluid.

As before we have our oil collection bucket out, and we threw down some old towels and rags to catch anything the bucket can’t. There are certainly better trays, pans, collection systems out there, but our main goal is to collect and recycle as much fluid as possible and the rest can land on a rag and be disposed of properly. We aren’t doing this every day so using up a few rags isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Lots and lots of small bolts, clips, pins and other hardware holding these things together. The valve bodies are always fun because not only are they hiding some transmission fluid but there are all kinds of neat little channels, springs, odd shaped rods and other parts inside. The valve body is the heart of any transmission and moves the fluid about the transmission to the appropriate gears and clutches at the right time so that the car travels down the road smoothly.

Under the valve body of this transmission we find a big old chain and we start seeing some gears. The chain connects the input shaft of the transmission to the drive gears and output shafts for the transmission. Once we get those gears and chain out of the way we can start seeing the clutch packs, and gears inside the transmission.

Same as the motor and transfer case tear downs we are collecting the steel and other scrap waste in our orange bucket today, we have interesting parts to go off to be used in artwork in the clear tote and the cast aluminum in its own pile for recycling. The parts we saved for artwork include some of the clutch pack housings, the output shaft and there are some planetary gear in there as well which are always fun. The best part about taking transmissions apart is we don’t have to figure out where everything belongs, because it isn’t getting put back together!

Just a quick paragraph and picture for the rear wheel drive transmission. It has a lot of the same parts as the front wheel drive transmission just in a different configuration. The valve body can typically be found on the bottom side. The clutch packs, gears, input and output shaft are all arranged longitudinally in the transmission housing. Since these transmissions are a little more straight forward they tend to come apart easier, and well if they want to put up a fight they might just get a few love smacks with a big hammer.

That’s all we have for our latest scrap tear down. We will have to follow up with how the gears and other items we are collecting get re-purposed. Maybe MackleCo will get some new additions to our advertising crew here in the near future.