How Many Of You Gentlemen Visit Salvage Yards For Repair Parts?

[Grumpy]

how many of you gentlemen visit salvage yards for repair parts?
I don,t know about most guys but I generally work on a very tight limited budget and at times it sure makes a great deal of financial sense to visit local salvage yards.
I had a couple small electrical parts like relays fail , recently, NAPA
https://www.napaonline.com/
wanted a total of $107 for three relays and two wiring pig tail connectors,

ROCKAUTO
https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/chevrolet,1996,corvette,5.7l+v8,1041398
would knock of about 55% off that cost, but having a bit of time and knowing what I needed was likely to be available I visited a local U-PICK-IT auto salvage ,
and for 15 minute walking around and $20 I not only got the relays and pigtail connectors, I got a couple spares.

one of the local guys had a brake caliper go bad and he ruined a brake rotor on a 1999 3/4 ton chevy truck,
napa wanted over $200 for the repair parts, for one rotor, brake pads,and caliper,
we got BOTH sides, brakes,calipers rotors etc for $95 at the the local U-PICK-IT auto salvage,
now thats not a direct comparison as one set of parts is used and the others new ,
but we inspected the parts we removed and they were in good working condition,
and came with bolts etc. that would not come with new parts in most cases

 

[Unforgiven]

I use to frequent the yards alot in my younger years. there was darn near anything u needed.
I have visited one particular yard since I was a child. This was with an adult of coarse..but the owners new me like I was one of their children.
As I was an older teen I even helped out stripping down some cars for them.
The problem today.. is that the insurance companies won't allow people to freely wander out into the yard anymore.
Even though these people new me well through the years... one day I was told that they could not allow anyone back into the yard.
Lawyer's and insurance company's ruin everything!