Now that you’ve decided to junk your car, you need to prepare it for the junk yard by removing a number of items from it. Yes, even though you’re sending it to be destroyed, you do need to prep it first, partly for the junk yard’s benefit but mostly for yours. You can sell your car all over the country, even in Wyoming, but you’ll still need to remove these items. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, and the odds of you then retrieving something from it are not very high. Even if it hasn’t been destroyed yet, the car and its contents are no longer legally yours.
Remove junk-car documents from glove box
Although it’s not recommended, some do keep their title and registration in their glove box on a day-to-day basis. If these important documents are there or elsewhere in the car, make sure to remove before junking your car. In most cases, you’re going to need the title in order to sell the car to anyone, including a junk yard.
And, even if you don’t need the registration to complete the sale, you should not leave that, a copy of your insurance or anything else that identifies you or anybody else in the car to ensure that this information never accidentally or intentionally gets into the wrong hands.
In fact, you should thoroughly check the entire car for these items and for anything else that is personally important to you. You might be surprised to learn that things oftentimes get into places as varied and unexpected as under and behind seats, under mats and crammed next to a seat belt. Also check behind the visors.
License plates: remove before junking your car
This is actually a legal requirement in a number of states; check what the case is for where you live. In some places, license plates move from vehicle to vehicle with the individual, so you would affix the ones currently attached to your junk car to whichever vehicle is going to serve as your junk car’s replacement. It’s also important to note that your insurance policy might require you to remove the plates even if your state’s DMV office does not.
Earn some money by selling your junk car’s parts
As long as you haven’t received a quote from a junk yard yet or you will contact them again to ask for a revised quote, consider that some of the things that you remove before junking your car can also earn you some money thanks to their individual values. Especially valuable could be its motor, alternator, battery (even if dead), wheels, radio, GPS and even its gasoline, especially if the gas tank is anywhere near full.
However, if you remove its wheels due to their value, make sure to replace them with ones that will at least allow the car to be towed to the junk yard. Also, if any gasoline needs to be removed, take care when doing so, using a siphon pump and storing it in containers designed for this purpose.
It’s important to consider that although the junk yard will give you more money if the car has valuable parts as opposed to if it’s just scrap metal, you will almost invariably make even more than that if you sell those individual parts yourself. The counter to that point is that it might not be worth it to you to spend the time and energy necessary to sell those parts individually.
References
https://www.cashautosalvage.com/10-things-junk-car/
http://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/making-money-dead-car-secrets-of-scrap-yard/
