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:

 

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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.

 

 

That is the primary risk but....

 

 

 

As much as it pains me to say anything nice about him, cdk 4219, is right. It's not just stolen but liens also have a risk. If a car is secured collateral on a loan, the person who "junks" it can get in serious trouble for devaluing or interfering with the lien-holder's right to repossess the collateral, but they may still repossess the vehicle - which means the lien-holder possibly can take the car from you and you are out the purchase money plus the costs of any labor. Plus if you have done irreparable damage to the car they might seek damages against you because you had a responsibility to verify that the car had no open liens before junking it. Some states have more protections than others so it pays to look up and know what your responsibilities are in receiving the cars. Start by talking to the local yards there and see what they say.

 

Only other thing I can add is make sure you are doing this in an area that is zoned for it and what your responsibilities are concerning fluids. Just because it is commercial doesn't automatically mean it allows auto repair/dismantling. Also, dismantle sites can become EPA hazmat sites pretty quick if you aren't paying attention, and the local EPA can hit you with serious fines for not adhering to waste disposal, or worse damage you do to the environment and the cost of cleanup.

 

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.

Again, Colorado may be different than ohio, but here in Ohio it is illegal to sell a car without a title. In order to junk a car here you must have a title in your name. Just because it isn’t reported stolen, again doesn’t mean it may not have legal issues. Without a title, even with a bill of sale, around here, it isn’t legal to sell or dismantle. If you don’t have a title here, scrapping the parted out shell of the car without title is illegal for the scrapper.

 

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.

 

It seems like you will have to scale fairly large to make any real money, not to mention time consuming. Pulling all the parts, inventory,shipping,etc. Once you go legit, you will have even more expenses..

 

How are you obtaining the vehicles? As others stated, I would be very concerned with stolen goods.

 

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.

I did this heavily back in 2008-10. My business partner and I specialized in miatas and rx7's. We had a three bat shop and warehouse of storage. We also built customer cars

 

What type of building do you have now? We started with a flex space warehouse in an industrial part of town before getting our own building and having a showroom.

 

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.

 

I think this is a really good idea out here in Colorado. I found a 95 t-100 sr5 without a spot of rust on it that’s now my daily. It only took about an hour and a half to change all 4 ball joints and all 4 tie rod ends. I get shocked when I see 80s and 90s dodge trucks that are just worn out instead of completely rusted out like back in Ohio. Good luck, I think you might have found something that you can make some decent money doing.

 

There is no shortage of cheap cars out here for us to work through.

No title is a big problem around here anyway. Around here you can’t do anything without title. Just because it isn’t reported stolen , doesn’t mean that there isn a bank lien or other legal loopholes. Doing this once or twice would probably not lead to anything bad, but starting a business with this greatly increases the odds of problems.

 

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.