C-Mart

Assuming you'll get air, this tool (below) has saved me a ton of time. I have yet to have bolt that it cannot take off. For things that can spin on you like driveshaft bolts it breaks them loose before spinning. Don't forget about lighting either. https://www.harborfreight.com/34-in-composite-xtreme-torque-air-impact-wrench-62892.html

Not much progress outside of making parts lists and collecting parts. Here are some fun goodies though: [/url] [/url] [/url] Set closest to the camera have trashed tires. Going to replace them some some street DRs. Set farther has a set of basically new 235/40/17 Toyo Proxes RRs (perfect e30 M3 fitment), which should make for some fun autoX. Cameo of the mutt.

Progress will look slow for the next few steps. Needs work on the fuel system plumbed, wiring, radiator/hoses, power steering, and brake/clutch lines. Not as fun seeing progress on these. After that the body panels/trim/interior will start going back on/in. Mechanically it is 98% done. I am considering beefing up the trans mount. Despite being done by a well known fabricator I am not sold that it is a well designed mount. Also, I need to drop the exhaust off at a fab shop and have them weld in some flanges to be able to bolt a cat on for emissions.

Motor is back in. Next is wiring and plumbing.

M3 is slowly getting put together, Q7 (4.2) is quickly being taken apart.

I am not super worried about zoning, Denver has some pretty industrial areas. Also, one of the things we want to do differently is having a surgically clean shop that disassembles the car as soon as they come into our possession vs cars that sit in a yard without the windows down open the elements or an oil cooler removed by a customer that is leaking the rest of the oil in the dirt. Collecting and properly disposing of the fluids should not be an issue.

The reason I asked the question is because there has to be a way to check these and protect myself and the company. Scrap yards face both the title and EPA issues, but there are thousands of them across the country.

Keep in mind, I have received some sort of paperwork and have run a carfax on every car I have bought thus far. My scrapper never asks for the title, but I always give it to him. Also, in the past 2 states I have lived, if the car is cut into 3 or more pieces they don't legally need a title, which is a bizarre law. Taking cars apart is not rocket science and hiring people in automotive school to do the work is easy and cheap. My two focuses right now are the IMS the process of photographing and logging the parts in said IMS. Once that is figured out accurate financial projections are a breeze. From what I can tell right now the margins are healthy enough where hiring people to do the disassembly, cleaning, photography, and logging still makes sense. I am concerned about stolen goods as well, that is why I brought it up. Scrap yards have it figured out, so I just need to figure out how they do it. We mainly buy from people on craiglist who can't afford to fix their cars and we are very intentional about what we buy, but are starting to get into auctions as well. Again to your point of scaling and making real money. Scaling is no problem. There is no shortage of cars so it is a matter of space and finding workers. As for money, the very conservative projection I ran when I was looking at renting a ~2500 sqft commercial space had us break even 12 months in with a ton of inventory on hand on a very small up front investment (buying a few cars) and reinvestment of profit from there. With our current hybrid model of the garage and storage unit(s), our monthly costs are laughably low and we are building up inventory and developing processes. At our current pace we are 1-2 years away from being able to finance an actual warehouse, which is Denver is a good business to be in at the moment. My full time job is great and allows me to make outside investments. I am excited that this one has to do with cars, which have been a lifelong hobby for me, but I wanted to open this idea up to the group in case I am wearing blinders because of that.

Right now we have a 2 car garage with a lift for disassembly and storage unit a mile away with industrial shelving. The storage unit is $.62/sqft/month and warehouse space is close to $1.00/sqft/month. We have the ability to add more units at this price as we need it. There is no shortage of cheap cars out here for us to work through.

I am parting the cars out, not reselling them whole. The risk comes from unknowingly receiving and selling stolen parts. Thus far, we have just taken photos of their ID and done a bill of sale if there were title issues. I'll keep this thread updated with progress/growth if anyone is interested. Our goal is to grow the company organically with profits. There is NO shortage of cars to make money off of.

Colt - Ideally we find one that allows you to add/remove as many fields as you want that does excel exporting and importing properly. If we can find that, we will use an existing IMS so that we can API/macro our data into several different places without having to recreate the wheel. Zx2 - Yes on refunding. A - we don't want to rip anyone off. B - we test all parts before removing. C - Things sell faster/for more with a warranty. I live in Denver, so I'll need to find one out here, unfortunately.

So I have been buying/selling car parts for years and after recently buying an E60 M5 to part out and making a good chunk of change I decided to take the plunge and make some investments that will allow me to scale. I have a guy that is local to me that is my 50/50 partner, which is helpful as we have the same long term vision of what the company can be and we both have full time jobs. The partner wants to run this full time when it is making enough money, which is another reason the opportunity was so appealing to me. The barrier to entry is very low in this field, but the reality is very few people do it properly. We are developing an inventory management system that automatically uploads our parts to eBay, Craigslist, and a website and keeps everything updated. IE if a part sells on eBay it is pulled from the website. It will also keep track of all of our accounting. Unlike most yards we bring a car in, test the parts we want to sell, completely part the car in a few days, and store all of the parts in a warehouse space, not outside and then we are on to the next. We use eBay sold to make sure the cars we are buying are a good investment, which has worked so far. Despite being able to make decent money doing this, my goal is to have the company finance a commercial space, so it is as much a real estate play as anything. Now to my question. Some of the cars we have considered buying do not have titles. Is there a place I can run the VIN prior to purchase to check to see if the car is stolen? The stolen car thing is really my only big concern as I don't want to deal with the headache. That said I would love to hear opinions from others as well on the business as a whole.

More

Door pic before cut and buff. Should be picking it up next week.

Atta boy. Use it and enjoy it.

255 White IE white with no additional colors added.

Ready for paint

$5800ish is around the range I have seen as well for a decked out dual 5200# 8.5 X 20. Longer ones aren't much more expensive, but I have little need for more than 20'.

Better off buying new. They maintain their value really well.

Motor pulled for paint. Glass out and 90% of trim pulled. Getting close.

I have learned the hard way to not modify a motor before the swap is completed. Plan is to get the LS1 running well and go from there. May go LS3 - may supercharge it - not 100% sure yet.