Do you keep your "old" parts after work is done?

Leave it out on the street corner. Fred will come by and pick it up.

 

I used to horde stuff, then life happened and I had to move the family circus halfway across the country for a new job...had about 30 days to sort through 14 years of hoarded stuff. What ball buster. Never again.
So once a year I devote an entire day to all my assorted piles...sort, and toss or keep. If I haven't had a chance/need to use it in the past six months, out it goes...into one of two piles...trash or recyclable for cash. Helps keeps the piles in check and makes me constantly review/restrain my pack-rat-itis. If I had to move the family circus again, I could sort out my chit in about a week and not leave any of it behind.
Just sayin...stay current.

 

That's not a worry. Sulfuric acid doesn't evaporate in any measureable way at room temperature.

+1
Advance Auto only gives me $10 store credit for mine. Are you getting $30 at a chain store?

 

I never throw out a fastener. I've got one of these small parts organizers, and I separate nuts, bolts, washers, nut/bolt combinations, screws, machine screws, and misc. fasteners into different column of bins. The top bin is small, below that is medium, below that is large. (as one starts to fill up, it gets divided. For instance large becomes medium/large and large/large.

Also, when I need a few stainless washers or fender washers, I don't buy just the 5-6 I need for the current job, I buy a box of 50.

I can't count how many trips to the hardware store this has saved me, and the resultant money saved. For me though it's less about the money, and more about the time saved and convenience. Many times I'm working on things in the evening, when the hardware store isn't open, so a missing fastener would mean work stops until morning.

And to be fair... I'm also a pack rat!

 

My experience with acid in an open garage container was actually hydrochloric (muriatic) acid.

Logically, I would not have expected any actual acid to vaporize at ambient temps, only water vapor. However, the accelerated corrosion effect on bare steel was undeniable. The irony is that I was using the diluted muriatic acid to clean rusted parts, which it will also do very effectively. After cleaning, the acid has to be neutralized and the parts oiled, or they'll rust like a sob.

After that experience, I no longer consider any acid-containing vessel in my garage to be a benign, inert object. Admittedly, our vehicles already have batteries on-board that can out-gas, but those are maintained charged and stable. IMO, there's no point in making that necessity worse with an idle surplus battery. All my vehicles have sealed batteries on them now.

I got a "gift card" from the local O'Reillys auto parts store, and it was for store credit, not in cash. Amount paid, if any, may be at the discretion of the local manager considering how much the core is worth to him, how good a customer you are, etc. I was more happy just to get the battery out of my garage. I remember the card being for $30, but it's still in my drawer. O'Reillys will probably end up getting my battery core for free anyway.

 

Many years ago when I was cruising Craigslist, I ran across a single mom looking for car/engine parts that she could decorate her autistic son's room--he was into cars and she had no money and his birthday was coming up. I called her and she came by to see if what I had laying around would work for her. Her son was really into engines, and of course, I had gears and belts and sensors and bearings and plugs and wires and gaskets and valve covers--even a set of crank cams. Turns out just what she was looking for, so I said I'd clean up everything, paint the parts different colors with leftover spray from various projects, and mount them to a leftover plywood shelf for ease of hanging. She picked it up a week later, along with a box of hang-able stuff like wheel covers and emblems, and was ecstatic. She sent me a pic of the decorated room.

So win-win-win-win. Both of them were happy, I had fun doing the project and I recycled stuff that would probably STILL be sitting on a shelf collecting dust.

EDIT: crank CAMS, not caps.

 

Good feeling story.

 

Ditto. Any common nuts/bolts removed go into coffee cans (for eventual recycling) but special fasteners/clips/long bolts/etc get sorted and saved.

A box of 100 washers costs less than the 12 I need for the job at hand.

I couldn't begin to count the number of times my 'cache' has saved the day, especially my brake parts bin.

 

About once a year I go through the shelves...most of the stuff stays but when I move and consolidate stuff I forget where I moved it to and find it accidentally a few days later.

 

I have a pair of old coffee cans full of old nuts and bolts, one is metric and the other is SAE. Washers go in there too.

I have boxes of OEM parts that were taken off in favor of aftermarket go-fast-shit for my GTI. Some of that I have to put back on before I see the smog guy, so it comes in handy. I just threw out the stock intercooler and some breather hoses around Christmas.

For my truck all I really have that I removed and kept is a set of rotors which got sticky after not many miles and the pads that came with them. Next time I need rotors I will probably have them turned, except the rotors I have are doing great several years later. Nothing else on my truck has been replaced that was salvaged. I do have a K&N intake kit sitting on the shelf.

For my VW Beetles I have a spare motor, 2 spare transaxle (one has a bent shift fork), a few extra carbs, spare distributor that I need to rebuild, and some other odd stuff. That stuff goes up in value but I have no plan to sell.

I also have the pile of goodies, the new parts and upgrade parts that are waiting for a weekend when my wife doesn't ambush me with her family coming over.

 

I only hang onto the parts temporarily under 3 conditions:
1. I have a shop do the work so I can check out the old worn parts.
2. It’s the OEM part and it’s not that bad for wear. This is to see if the aftermarket parts hold up like the OEM so I can always revert back.
3. If it’s solid steel or aluminum, I give it to my Dad so he can toss it in his scrap pile of crap he hauls to the junkyard to get pennies on the dollar for anyway.

 

@Stuck in the '00s man thats a really cool thing that you did. I love seeing car parts used to make art or furniture, doing it for a good cause is even better.

 

Thanks! It was total chance. Wish I still had a pic. Used a window crank (anybody remember those?) on a "crank" gear attached to the cam gears with a serpentine belt so he could turn it. It really WAS fun to build.

 

All of you hoarders are giving me anxiety.

 

I took my old batteries back to battery land and got $10 cash ea.

 

bring it to autozone and they will give you a $10 gift card.

I brought mine in and grabbed a roll of shop towels and two gallons of wiper fluid. Not bad for free.

 

No Autozone in Canada, but we do have NAPA. I'll give them a call and see what their deal is.