Most Common MB Diesel Idiocy At the JY

[Sev]

it never fails--i'm at the junkyard and find a diesel w123, and some genius has undone the hard lines to the injectors, and bent them about 100+ degrees in the wrong direction. others sawzall or bolt cutter the oil cooler lines off cause they don't have a wrench wide enough, and yet others attempt to disassemble the top part of the injection pump only to find out they didn't know what they were doing in the first place. dozens of vacuum pumps never get removed due to 8" of grease coating the bolts so thickly that that one bolt on the bottom of it just won't come off using traditional methods, and then there's the tachometer amplifier with the caps busted off becuase they never thought to unscrew it.

yeah, it's pretty safe to say, if you don't have a clue about how to dismantle parts, you're somehow magnetically attracted to diesel benzes at the jy. i guess they figure, hey, if I can't have it, i'll ruin it for someone else. or: jee, it's one of those diesel benzes i keep seeing through the cloud of smoke in front of me on the streets--i wonder how i can get back at them for blowing a hole in the ozone layer--i know, i'll take a hammer to the threading of the oil cooler. ha! take that you tree-hugging diesel owners

and that's just the engine. don't get me started on the interiors these gorillas get their hands on.

i dunno, what's the lamest attempt at disassembly (aka sabotage) you've seen at the JY?

[layback40]

Sev,
You have a way of cutting to the point well!! A big hammer, a 3' pipe wrench and maybe an axe are all the tools that some take to the junk yard pick a part.

I have seen an engine mount removed by cutting the body of the car and the mounting arm with an oxy torch rather than undoing the 3 bolts.

I once saw a John Deer tractor that was meant to have dual rear wheels. It had duals on one side and a single on the other. Some clown had cut through the 4" axle with an oxy torch because the tractor was too wide to fit through a gate. $8,000 repair needed to tractor over a $200 gate.

Problem is these creatures breed like flies!!

[4x4_Welder]

My biggest pet peave is the morons who pull the air cleaner off, then leave the hood up on the car. I was looking for a junk engine to do a fitment and header mockup on my F100, the JY owner claimed all the engines there ran great. I asked if the standing water in the intakes helped, and tried to point out that one had frozen and actually popped one of the heads off. I was asked to never return there for some reason-

[HuskyMan]

there are some people who should never be allowed near an automobile. by allowing morons to pull their own parts, the junk yards are allowing these idiots to destroy perfectly good parts. the cure? the JY employees could pull the parts for the customer, thereby eliminating auto-destruction. but.....that would require that they run their business like a BUSINESS.

[MS Fowler]

I take great care to close doors and place all door panels and seats etc inside, and close the hood to preserve those parts for other MB parts hunters. Who knows I might be saving them for me.

[Skippy]

Originally Posted by HuskyMan

there are some people who should never be allowed near an automobile. by allowing morons to pull their own parts, the junk yards are allowing these idiots to destroy perfectly good parts. the cure? the JY employees could pull the parts for the customer, thereby eliminating auto-destruction. but.....that would require that they run their business like a BUSINESS.

I hear you. I worked in a self service junk yard for a little over a year. I also spent a year in Iraq. I experienced a great deal more cognitive disonance and emotional stress from the junkyard than I ever did in Iraq. The company I worked for only stays in business because they buy their cars for next to nothing, pay their employees very little for a lot of work, and charge high prices for the parts the customers actually pay for rather than stealing. They don't get any points for efficiency, intelligence, or good decision making. With a few well-appreciated exceptions, the customers generally weren't any smarter than corporate management, except when it came to innovative ways to steal stuff.