The Scrap Merchant

It's what? Most of the scrap yards I go to are DIY. They will get a fork lift out to roll it over, or maybe a steel saw to chop a lump of chassis / body panel off for you.

He's gone to the wrong place.

Take em off and bring em home, if towing take off and leave at home.

Take em out, get a mate and tow it.

Take it off, put sheet of hardboard on if driving, not needed for towing.

Take it off, not needed for run to scrap yard.

Unclip or remove the few screws that hold them on and bring em home.

Take em off - may have to take bumper, and wings off too to get to bolts. Need drivers door if driving or towing. Don't need wings or bumper for towing.

Take em out. Take drivers out at yard and bring it home.

Take it off and bring home. Be careful how you stow this, you really don't want it to tip over it will spill. (Don't ask - see wheels below)

take it to yard, jack up, remove wheel drop on bricks, blocks and take wheels home with you. I have, my mate has, anyone with a set of alloys, newish tyres or new car with same size tyres would.

If driving, drain at home, fill with water, take hoses off and usually held by 2 bolts. If towing just remove it and leave at home.

nothing stopping you taking this out, you really don't need sounds on one trip to scrappy. Get the speakers too.

Take it out. Wear waterproofs if raining.

Take trim off and undo the one nut, bring it home, get the switches too. If towing, take the instruments and any other switches + heater controls off and leave at home. May as wel leave center console home too. Heater matrix is next.

humm. Driving or towing this is quite useful and hard to remove at scrappy unless like some GM models with high mounted rack.

Take em off.

just unclip or remove the one screw, don't forget the boot lamp and any footwell lamps.

unclip and waggle or 2 screws leave at home. get door cards and seat belts too.

wheels already off, discs either fall off (wack with hammer) or one screw, 2 more bolts and you get the calipers too, just cut the hose.

cut pipes undo 2 nuts.

well you got to leave them something

Sell the bits on Ebay or owners forums and then take the remains to the scrap yard. If you flog the axles / suspension / wheels / steering / brakes then you may need to rent a petrol powered steel saw to chop it up yourself so it fits in whatever transport you have or can borrow. Send log book to Swansea with bit ticked that says it's been scrapped.

It's not hard to take fuel line off the fuel rail or filter and a stick hose on that goes over side of car into a can. Make a wire and switch up to plug in place of the pump relay. Connect to a battery and switch on, out comes the fuel into the can. After setup less than

In part you have a point, however cars IMHO are different to a DVD player or TV. A TV doesn't kill someone (usually) if a bit falls off.

Cars are already being manufactured to a minimum quality, and I speak from an engineering point of view. You have to maintain a minimum build quality of cars, as they are basically a large projectile under the control of usually less than competent pilots.

Any failures can result in fatal incidents, and cutting corners to meet price demands will do that. I already find it worrying that I see some terrible designs that are there to reduce costs - even on some prestige brands.

And let's face it, the quality of electrical goods is s**te at the moment. I was actually talking to a chap today that owns his own A/V shop, and he was telling us that most stuff made now is s**te, and you can't even get parts for most of it at all.

Not everything is junk though Andy, some stuff can be amazingly well put together, so much so that as I mentioned previously, I can't even understand how the raw materials can be purchased for the selling price of some items, let alone manufactured and sent halfway around the world, presumably having made a whole string of people some sort of profit on the way!

IMO a lot of manufacturers who did make junk just a few years back have improved tremendously, looking at the TV side I can think of one manufacturer whose latest generation of chassis are quite nicely made and which may not only turn up in cheap supermarket receiver's such as Bush, Goodman's etc, but can also appear inside telly's with top names such as Hitachi, Toshiba, and Mitsubishi (the only real difference being that the punter is prepared to pay more!)

It's also not unusual to find Philips manufactured TV and VCR chassis in stuff bearing a Goodman's label, plus one or two other cheaper European makes.

If all obstacles and tariffs were removed, coupled with automation plus cheap labour and overheads, I reckon that if Ford can sell a Ka for around

The message from "Phineas Phreak" contains these words:

A friend of mine does the brochures for Dixons/Currys group. Apparently they all sit around in a meeting with sample merchandise and play with it before assigning it to a brand which they consider matches their perception of the quality and price point. Then they contact the brand concerned and arrange the licensing.

Philips tubes are often used in cheap TV sets, but you'll find that 99% of cheap and own brand electricals are made by Beko these days - even the bottom end of some reputable Jap. brands comes from there now.

Beko = 'Vestel' although I believe they also have factories in other countries, IMO some of their earlier efforts were quite 'messy', but at least reasonably serviceable, the more recent and better made 11AK37 chassis can turn up inside a number of big name Japanese manufacturers receivers i.e. Toshiba 28N13D2.

I've got a 28 inch wide screen Crown TV in my den, It's fitted with a Panasonic CRT and uses a chassis that I've only ever seen used in Grundig and Wharfedale receivers.

I've had it for nearly four years without any problems and the picture quality is superb.. and that's coming from someone who sees an awful lot of different telly's during the course of a week!

You do realise where they're made, don't you?

Well I've got a manual for it (CRP-28WS) and the chassis looks vaguely like it could be manufactured by someone like Vestel, but other than that there is absolutely no indication of its origins.

You guessed right.

In news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Peter Hill scribed for want of a better word:

End Big Snip

Damn I forgot the cigarette lighter, go faster stripes, and me Christmas tree air-freshener :-( I will never sleep tonight now

I didn't realise, especially being unable to trace its origins (the E9A chassis) it seems a bit of an oddball for Vestel.. any clues why Steve?

No idea.... I'm not an engineer, just someone who's sold several hundred TV sets, mostly from the lower end of the market.

Come on Steve admit it, It must give you a faint glow of satisfaction when some pompous bastard says "I wouldn't touch cheap rubbish like Bush or Beko with a bargepole" when you know full well that you're flogging him a Tosh or Mitsi Blue Diamond that uses the same chassis!

IME, it's only the cheap end of the Japanese brands that are rebadged Beko sets. Generally I won't buy anything not made in Japan.

Does that apply a to Japanese cars and electronics manufactured in the UK?

Given that we were talking about consumer electronics..... I don't apply the same rules to cars.

I'd be *very* wary of the UK manufactured Sony stuff, as I know the kind of people putting it together ;-)

Which brings us neatly back to Andy's original point of build quality, IMO even Japanese stuff is a pale shadow of what it was originally.

You know the sort of thing, buy a TV, VCR or Hi Fi unit (which was built like a brick outhouse) and never have to remove the back cover in over 20 years of reliable working.

In my experience those days I'm afraid are just a distant memory, with most top of the range Japanese equipment being manufactured anywhere except Japan, and reliability and performance being almost indistinguishable from good quality stuff made elsewhere.

Yes, look back, perhaps 10 years, and most goods were quite solid - metal chassis, decent componets (you could feel and see they were well made).

Even the brand names we trust have plasticky bits and a feel of poor quality now. I would reckon that the pinnacle era of car build quality was betwen 1989 and 1992. Ok some things have improved, rust is not such an issue now, but IMHO parts such as engines and gearboxes are not lasting any longer now than they were 15 years ago. Although we have extended services, which should be countered by better oils and filters, experience shows that this is not the case, extended service intervals simply are not good for engines.

This is especially notable where manufacturers have decreased quality and materials in the engines - notably the Ford engines with the sticking valves, caused by cost cutting.

Yup, or indeed some of the Brit stuff. My Mum still has an old Ferguson Tx TV, the one with the fake wood front, and it still works perfectly.

Hitachi and Toshiba have been building in Wales for at least 20 years.

Going back to the cars, you can very easily distinguish a car made in Japan or elsewhere. Certainly with Hondas I can easily tell those that were made in the UK.

On Nissans it was so easy too, they were made in the UK, Japan and Spain. Quality was in the order of Japan, UK and Spain. Much the same for Ford too, in the order of Germany, UK, Spain.

Overall though, reliability is *almost* related to the price paid. A cheap car is a cheap car. However, some manufacturers excell at different things. Small, low powered and basic cars, seem to be hard to beat the Panda or the Seicento (barring the head gaskets) by Fiat, yet the rest of the range is pants.

Honda are the best in reliability, although the Civic and Accord are best in the range there. Comes at a price though, but that is the best example of get what you pay for.

Hyundai and Suzuki seem to have extremely good value cars, being reasonably reliable, if a little fragile, but for the money...... hard to beat.

I find much the same in the electronics business too. As rule, you get what you pay for, but there are the odd exceptions that give very good value.

Overall though, nothing is built as well now as a few years ago.