( Hi Webmaster and BC, please let this live for at least several hours....)

Anyway, some guys love yachts and some guys love golf, and my thing is U PULL IT Junkyards.

I remember last summer at this time strolling through a U PULL IT junkyard in South Jersey on a summer afternoon. Some people see junk as junk, but I was fascinated and in an incredible high. There was so much machinery and technology for pennies on the dollar! I lingered and walked slowly, just like some people linger and walk through Yosemite. I was in total exhilaration investigating the cars, seeing how they were built and came apart and were put together. I might as well have been at the Smithsonian. The inventive creative type in me was drooling. I was in Diesel head Nirvana. I’m serious.

For those not in the know, there are two kinds of Junkyards.

There are the mean, ugly, nasty types on the factory city’s fringes whose hardened ruthless owners extract fortunes from you and you don’t turn your back for a second. The cars sit on racks piled high to the sky and the crusher is in the back of the yard. You draw your shoulders up and wear a serious face, because violence occasionally happens among the gritty workers and customers.

The second type is located in a rustic area in the middle of nowhere in the and there in some meadow some eccentric type runs a U PULL IT, not really trying to earn a fortune and instead just to earns some spending money. Peaking through the trees, you see row after row of car parked in neat procession, and you see all types of customers there: students, moms, gear heads and kids.

Anyway there was a Yard like this where I lived in South Jersey.

The owners saw me there so much that they waived the $2.00 admission fee and gave me credit.
It was there, only 5 miles from my house! I found 3 Mercedes W123 300D’s. From one, I extracted the new interior from for $90. The transmission was $100. Someone else beat me to the engine, but I got the IP for $30 and a nice cluster for $15.00 I found brand new rear transaxle joints on a rusted out ’79 with the front end smashed for $25. When I opened the boots, there was OEM oil still in them! And a radiator for $15.00 that was probably an year old.

I found a brand new SAAB interior that sold for $500 on the Net for $80. (There was a fixed price schedule) I found tons of Volvo’s with their priceless fuel pumps and AC Clusters sunroof assemblies and turbochargers and in the end I mined that yard for probably $8000 of parts for a total of $1000.

And you know what else I found ( besides some 30 pairs of sneakers in various Trunks?) I found mY Soul.