Scrap Yard Gems

[Pete in Lincs]

3 hours ago, Sabrejet said:

what for a back axle?

Anglia van. It wouldn't half accelerate!

But would probably top out at 60 and be noisy.

[Vince1159]

1 hour ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Anglia van. It wouldn't half accelerate!

But would probably top out at 60 and be noisy.

I haven't seen it for a while but a company over here had a Bedford HA van and it looked gorgeous....

[Pete in Lincs]

HA van? Gorgeous? They were designed with a ruler!

Handy though. I drove one once & got stopped for speeding! 🚓

[Vince1159]

10 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

HA van? Gorgeous? They were designed with a ruler!

Handy though. I drove one once & got stopped for speeding! 🚓

Think 70s metal flake paint,jacked up backend and the memories from the decade of customs....

[HOUSTON]

saberjet..

 

WHOA!  There are real classic classy cars in your photographs..

 

Thank you for sharing them... 

 

loved them.... but a question.... the people in the area where you photographed these (You mention place names)

 appear to have abandoned them. Is that so or WERE the cars abandoned in proximity of the owners homes/areas  or just simply discarded like trash? ... they look AMAZING even in their "broken down" state.  

classic cars have been known to be kept in owners GARAGES as they get too old and then they die and classic cars come up for sale at Christies or some auction house... just curious as how someone could discard cars that were REAL CARS not this electric thingy  we see on the roads... and soon maybe in F1 ..

 

once again  thank you for your efforts in posting these photos..much appreciated.

[Sabrejet]

@HOUSTON - many thanks for the kind comments. I may have a few more if I can find them.

 

Most of these photos were taken at scrap yards, and though it's difficult to see why the cars would have ended up there, I do recall that back in the early 1970s it didn't take much to warrant scrapping a car: my dad had a Morris 1000 van which went that way because he couldn't get some obscure spare part for it when it failed its annual MoT test. These cars often didn't have oil filters either (!) - again my father's 1958 Hillman Husky was one of those - and so seized engines were a common occurrence. I experienced one just as I was off into town to get a new filter and oil for my Humber Sceptre. A new engine solved that problem but I can see why many folks gave up at that point.

 

And then there's rust: despite what our parents may have told us, old cars were cr@p when it came to build quality, and tin worm was the biggest issue. One could guarantee that even a few years-old car would need regular bouts of welding and again it didn't take much for their owners to give up and pension them off. Strangely there were few obviously accident-damaged cars in those scrap yards.

 

But another thing you used to see a lot of was cars abandoned in gardens and drives - the split-screen Morris above being one, the Mark 2/3 Super Snipe near Poole being another. I suspect their owners were 'getting round to fixing them' but never got round to it. There used to be an Austin A90 round the corner from here like that - I'll have to see if it's still there though I imagine someone has rescued it by now.

 

For sure, those were the days and I dearly wish I'd rescued something myself!

 

 

[bentwaters81tfw]

Quite often a 'fixer - upper' just rusted away while waiting it's turn. Not so bad if it was dry stored, but left out on grass, and that was the end.

[Fastcat]

In the early '70s I had a '54 Healey 100/4. When I got married and we set up home, I couldn't afford to use the Healey for work - it was a 22 mile run so the Healey used a gallon each way and the insurance wasn't cheap either. Reluctantly I sold the Healey on in good faith. The week before I sold it, I had it MOTd at a decent garage. It passed without a problem. Less than a month later, one of the rear shock absorbers fell off.

It hadn't come undone - it broke away pulling out the section of chassis it was mounted on. The guy I sold it to was an enthusiast and had it repaired but had it been a lesser car it would have gone for scrap.

I completely rebuilt the Healey's engine and during the time it was off the road I had a Ford Pop shooting brake which found it's way to the tip when repairs cost more than the thing was worth. A 105e replaced it but that too went to it's doom when the front strut mountings rusted through. And they'd already been replace - it just rusted round them!

 

Before the Healey, I had an MGA coupe. I had to replace the whole front wing due to rust during which exercise, I found that the driver's door pillar was almost non existent due to rust. I repaired it but sold it on soon after. I couldn't face what might be lying in wait on the passenger side. 

Before the coupe, I had an MGA roadster (sold it before it got too unreliable) and before that, an MG TC, ditto. 

 

All of these were fairly cheap, Healey - £300, MGA coupe - £150, MGA roadster - £125, MG TC - £110 and they were all decent cars and worth the work. Things like the Anglia and Pop weren't classics and were very cheap so when something bad went wrong, it was cheaper and easier to scrap them rather than pay good money and then waiting for the next disaster.

 

Dave 

[roginoz]

The annual application of salt and grit on even the least frosty roads put paid to numerous vehicles especially the salt which lodged in chassis members and steering arms, a cancer waiting to happen.

 

A school friend had an Austin 7 saloon and, while driving round the lanes with 3 passengers, the whole body let go down one side and almost rolled off. We had to wind down the windows and hold on to it so we could [legally] get home.

Of course, we could always have dumped the body and driven home with the car 'au naturelle', but I don't think the village bobby would have seen the funny side !!

 Rog 

[bentwaters81tfw]

I have known of a 'E' model Vauxhall Velox have the body drop off the floor pan in motion. I owned an 'F' model Victor, and both sides of the floor were fibreglassed to the inner sills under the carpet. There was little in the way of chassis members on those cars, the sills carried the loads to the rear. Mine cracked the inner sill, and the surrounding tinwork resembled cornflakes. There was a quantity of Cataloy in the main members. It got scrapped come the next test time.

[Admiral Puff]

As an articled clerk in the '60s, I have memories (nightmares?) of going up to Sydney to sit exams, in the company of one of my fellow clerks and in his FE Holden, and of watching the road go by under my feet through the rust holes in the floor ... 

[Andrew Jones]

Going to school in the 1960's , living in a rural area , the owner of a local garage used to run the school cars. We used to get picked up in an elderly Morris Oxford car, and found it a delight . As youngsters we would lift up the mats on the floor then lift up the pieces of plywood and watch the road speed by under our feet , through the rust holes in the floor, some of which were fairly sizeable.

 

Andrew

[Mr T]

My wife and her sister shared an Austin Metro when I first met her and sisters boyfriend welded a new patch as the floor pan had rusted through on the passenger side, mind you Metros came with rust as standard, our last one was a nightmare, the Micra that replaced went 15 years with few problems except near the end. 

[Jo NZ]

2 hours ago, Mr T said:

My wife and her sister shared an Austin Metro when I first met her and sisters boyfriend welded a new patch as the floor pan had rusted through on the passenger side, mind you Metros came with rust as standard, our last one was a nightmare, the Micra that replaced went 15 years with few problems except near the end. 

The X reg Metros were the first year of production. When it was launched all the cars (W reg) came straight off the line, The first year's production (when they where finding all the faults) got left on an airfield and were  issued to dealers some time later. It was noticeable that the X reg cars rusted first - not the (supposedly older) W reg ones.

[Mr T]

As I recall, the car was 'Y' reg and so could have been in that batch, given that it was in North Yorkshire in the mid 80's. 

[fightersweep]

On 1/24/2019 at 8:34 PM, Sabrejet said:

And not the best shot, but quite a rare car to see in a scrappy: Triumph Renown in among the other cars which start with 'T' at a scrapyard (name escapes me) at Newtown, Bournemouth/Poole. EDIT: I assumed they were Toyotas but I note that they are Datsuns, back when Nissans were Datsuns.

 

 

 

Thanks for posting up all these fantastic images! I particularly like the one above, because I have a very big soft spot for 70s Japanese cars. Not sure why, but Toyota 2000GT anyone? Even the bread and butter cars looked good to me.

 

Been years since I rummaged around a scrap yard, but I can still smell it!  Something I used to do regularly looking for bits and pieces for my day to day cars and some of the restorations I was doing. I did pick up a 1937 Standard Flying Nine and a 1946 Austin K5. Sold them years ago, but I think they're still running somewhere. 

 

For the military buffs. Did anyone visit the scrappy near RAF Benson. Went there in the early 90s and found an amazing collection of WW2 vehicles rotting away, some very, very rare. He also had a lot of ex US Navy GMC 6x6s and Jeeps....and all the jeeps were the early bar grill, not the pressed radiator grille. All bought in just after the war and parked there ever since.

 

Good point about old cars on people's driveways! Not something you see so much now, but they were everywhere back in the day. I had forgotten about that.

 

Steve