At Home Mechanic

Call them the bone yard, the rubbish heap, the scrap yard, the breakers or what ever, the place you go to salvage parts from cars no longer in service is a wonderful place for the At Home Mechanic to frolic. Well maybe I over state my case, but in any event the junkyard is my favorite source for parts great and small for my current project car. But more than that, the junkyard can occasionally yield a true gem that will reward the finder with a bounty and eventually make some desperate car enthusiast happy. Allow me to elaborate.

I had some spare time on my hands today with no pressing need to be anywhere at any particular time. Idle hands are the Devil's tools so I engaged myself in a jaunt down to my favorite local junkyard, just to keep myself out of mischief. I needed some minor parts for my hobby car; there is a car show coming up and I wanted to finish off a couple of niggling details before the event. And a trip to the junkyard would allow me to stroll the grounds and see what is currently available.

You have to visit the junkyard on a regular basis and get lucky with your visit. The selection of old cars available for dismantling is constantly being turned over as the cars longest in inventory get picked over and removed for new stock coming in every day. On any given day you could find nearly a dozen cars that will yield parts you need, and on the very next day they can be all gone and you will get stiffed. But in my local junkyard the supply is large, the turnover relatively slow and there are just enough exotic cars to make the visit interesting.

My hobby car is a 1987 Honda CRX Si, not terribly unusual by the standards of Southern California where I live, but not as common on the streets as it once was. Where the junkyard would often have 6 or 7 such cars from which to pick parts in the past, these days the chances are good that maybe only one or two are available. Today I was luck enough to have three old CRX's to choose from and I was able to snag some small rubber parts that will I was looking for. So this was a good day in the junkyard, but not that magical type of day. Or so I thought.

I spied a Second-Generation Z28 Camaro over in the side of the junkyard reserved for General Motors cars. Normally, "high interest" cars like the high performance Z28 Camaro would never have made it to a common junkyard. Usually, this car would have gone to a yard that specializes in Camaros, Corvettes and the like with prices jacked up to soak the poor souls who are slavishly devoted to those old cars. The Z28 Camaro sitting in my friendly local junkyard was like a jewel glimmering amongst the dirt, a rose amongst weeds, a shining beacon luring me toward it.

My future stepson has just turned 16 and has purchased a 1978 Z28. His Camaro is in excellent condition; the previous owner had run out of patience with the restoration project and had sold the car at a bargain price. But the boy's Z28 is missing some minor plastic piece under the hood and the junkyard car gave up the parts that were needed. So this was the serendipity that I was speaking of, right?

Well it could have been the end of a happy story, but not quite. Because, as I was walking out of the junkyard an obscure emblem on a dusty car caught my eye. Parts of the emblem were actually broken away, but enough remained for me to see that it said, "...gen pow..." with distinctive Japanese writing just below it. This emblem was the remains of a genuine "Mugen Power" emblem attached to a genuine Mugen part, in this case a pristine Mugen rear spoiler for the 1986-89 Acura Integra. For those who do not know, Mugen is the in-house performance arm of the Honda Company (think AMG for Mercedes) and their parts are highly prized for their function and their handsome features. Rare when new, Mugen parts for a car that is nearly 20 years old are essentially impossible to find today. I have hit the Motherlode, the El Dorado, the Lost Dutchman's Mine of rare car parts in finding an example in such good condition.

I snapped up the Mugen rear spoiler along with all my other junkyard booty and nearly danced all the way home with the wealth of my finds. I got the parts for my car, my step-son gets the parts he needs, I have a very rare Mugen part that I will sell for a minor profit and some lucky Integra owner who has been searching for a genuine Mugen rear spoiler for his car will get what he has been looking for. Truly a serendipitous day.