Welcome to Sports Car Salvage. We are a niche hobbyist sports car dismantler located in Northeast Ohio, selling parts for C4 & C5 Corvettes, Mazda Miatas, and other sports and performance cars. We also restore diamonds in the rough. Let us help you with your restoration project.

Shipping Big Auto Parts Cheaply

November 11, 2018 | Posted in Helpful Tips, Shipping | By

One of the curses of dealing with shipping automotive parts is that some of the parts are really big.  A lot of them, however, don’t weigh a lot.  We often end up fighting the freight demon of dimensional weight. Let’s say you have a fender from a Toyota Supra.  They are almost 6′ (2m) long, but don’t weigh a lot, even packaged.  They weigh around 25 pounds (12kg.)  If you try to ship this via USPS, UPS, or FedEx, especially long distances, you get penalized for the fact that it is bulky, but light.

We utilize two services that you may not be familiar with to ship these bigger, lighter, items.  The first is offered is Greyhound Package Express (Busfreighter will soon be the new name.) GPX is ideal for bulky, somewhat light, items.  You’re allowed up to 100# per piece, 82″*47″*29″. This allows you some serious flexibility in shipping things like fenders, hoods, car doors, etc.  There are a couple of GOTCHA’s to watch out for.  First, it is NOT a door to door service.  You drop the package off at the bus station, your consignee has to pick it up at their bus station.  The second is that NOT EVERY GREYHOUND LOCATION IS A GPX LOCATION.  It is essential to verify before setting up your shipment that the receiving station accepts freight.  Check the website. Finally, GPX does NOT INSURE AUTO PARTS FOR DAMAGE.  Only for loss.  Declare your full value, package it very securely, and pretend it’s going to be tossed around by college football players who don’t like you.  We’ve only had a couple of issues with damage, but they do suck.  Oh, and MAKE SURE YOU PROVIDE A GOOD PHONE NUMBER FOR THE RECIPIENT.  They have 7 days to pick it up and then storage charges may start. Oh, by the way, you save a TON buying your label on the website.  Like almost a 50% discount in most cases.

The other service we have used is Fastenal 3PL. 3PL is great for bigger, heavier parts.  They handle your item on a pallet, and it moves like any other freight.  You have to get a quote BEFORE shipping.  The service delivers freight from Fastenal locaton to Fastenal location, and like GPX, is NOT door to door.  You’re also at the mercy of their schedule and freight doesn’t always move to all locations all the time.  You may have to be flexible in dropping it off a town or two away, and it is NOT an expedited service.  That said, we’ve had very good service from them and the only issue we ever really had was a store employee trying to pull the “little lady” BS on me, which was quickly resolved by a call to my 3PL representative. One Gotcha.  If you ship on a pallet without a box/crate around the item, it is NOT insurable.  Not really a big deal for something like an engine or engine block.  More of a big deal for a fiberglass Corvette hood.

So that’s a small summary of those two services.  Both are “we’re going there anyway” services, and not the fastest, but the savings over traditional freight, UPS or FedEx can be SIGNIFICANT.

Speaking of UPS, one other tip that applied to them AND Greyhound.  You do not HAVE to package your item.  It must be safe to handle by drivers and not be a risk to other freight.  But it is perfectly acceptable to ship tires, wheels, suspension parts and the like without a box.  While a box/crate/pallet offers better protection, it is not always practical.  This is a picture of a Toyota Supra subframe I packaged for transport via UPS (and I did the other subframe the same day to go via Greyhound.) I wrapped it in a moving blanket which I then securely taped around it and sent it on the way to our customer.  It arrived safely and intact, as did the one sent via UPS.

I hope you find this useful, the quick takeaways are:

  1. Know the rules and limitations of the carrier you’re going to use.
  2. Understand that these services are NOT door to door delivery.
  3. Make sure that both you and the recipient are comfortable with the idea that it may take 2-4 weeks for the item to arrive.
  4. USE THE WEBSITES to get quotes, information, tracking and delivery times.
  5. Think outside the box.

Ciao for now!

Marisa Husvar
Owner of www.sportscarsalvage.us.

 

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Mea culpa, posting frequency fail

This orange C3 Corvette looks great from the driver side. The passenger side is another story.

November 6, 2018 | Posted in Helpful Tips, update | By

1977 C3 Corvette to be parted out.

Good evening folks,

I have been really bad about posting on the blog here, but I am going to set a goal of doing better at that and getting at least one or two posts up a week. I have been loading our eBay store with parts in anticipation of the winter holiday selling season.  We have Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday…  Ya know what, I’ll give you a great deal any time. Just ask! I have also just finished a ton of updates on our website.  Check them out!

Look for some posts in the next few days.  In the meantime, here is a video we did on DIY creation of custom keychains from diecast cars such as Matchbox and Hot Wheels.

 

All the best,

Marisa

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Chevrolet Corvette Items For Sale

August 21, 2018 | Posted in Corvettes, Parts Cars, update | By

Just a quick note, we’re adding items for Chevrolet Corvette daily in our eBay store. Many hard to find and highly desirable parts are going up for sale! Just a few examples in the photo below, hope you’re having a great day!

 

Some of these are leftover donors from our project car.

 

 

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More progress pictures on our 1976 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

June 29, 2018 | Posted in Corvettes, update | By

Details: 1976 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, moderately built 350, automatic, straight, never wrecked, former straight-line race car. Dodge Viper Red. Has minimal interior and a custom racing dash in it at present. Car is restorable or is going to be a bad ass summer driver. Not sure how far we’re going to take it, yet.


We’re actually looking at picking up another C3 parts car from a friend with a decent interior/dashboard and the remaining parts from it will end up on our ebay store.

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Some pictures of our 1976 Corvette Stingray in-progress

June 13, 2018 | Posted in Corvettes, update | By

Just a quick post to share some pictures of the on-going project we’re doing turning this never-wrecked former race car back into something at least summer streetable.  This will eventually be for sale, we’re not going to put a heater/ac back into the car and for someone to restore it the rest of the way will be fairly easy, it current has a nicely fabricated dash panel but would be so much nicer with an OEM dash reinstalled.  

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Happy (groan) Tax Day!

April 17, 2018 | Posted in Shop Time, update | By

Greetings everyone, it’s the wonderful day everyone looks forward to… The deadline to file your taxes in the USA.  Gag me with a goat horn.  We got ours done and due to the recent changes actually got a small refund this year.  I’ll have to watch my calculations a little better for the coming year, as I prefer to owe a little than get a little back.

The rest of April we’ll be updating old listings in the eBay store by ending them and refreshing them with new photos, better descriptions and updated pricing as well as continuing to add in new items from the #Chrysler #LeBaron and a bunch of #NOS #NAPA filters and other parts we purchased for resale from an enterprising local young man.

We’ll be looking for a new donor in May.

We hope all is well with you!

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New Season, New Domain Name for the store!

April 10, 2018 | Posted in Helpful Tips, update | By

We’ve always been proactive in making our stuff easy to find, but something escaped our attention…  The link to our eBay store has always been http://stores.ebay.com/sportscarsalvage. Not horribly hard to find, but, well, long and not easy to remember.  We’ve had an extra domain name sitting for quite some time, Fastwrecks.com, that we haven’t previously used.  Today we set it up where that links directly to the store.  So now to remember how to find us, simply type that in and you’ll head right to the store!  We hope this makes it easier for you!

Happy Spring!

Marisa

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Spring and Status and Stuff

February 24, 2018 | Posted in 1989 Chrysler LeBaron Turbo, Family, Parts Cars, Shop Time, update | By

We know we promised the Chrysler LeBaron parts would be appearing on our eBay store soon, but we had a bit of a farm emergency in that Stormy, our 3 months out Boer buckling, developed pneumonia. We had almost a week of providing care for him including antibiotic and vitamin B complex injections, and close monitoring of him.  We actually had him in the house and at the workshop with us for most of the last week.  He’s made a great recovery and we’re now starting some deeper work around the shop to get ready to part out that LeBaron.

We’ll be taking a couple of days to tear down some old Mustang and other doors we have to post those parts online and clear out the shells, do a bit more cleaning and reorganizing of our workshop and then we should be pulling the LeBaron in by Tuesday to part it out.  It has a strong running 2.2 turbo and builds solid boost, so if you need one, get in touch with us.  You get a much better price buying direct versus waiting for it to be posted online.

Beyond that the goal is to get that torn down quickly, get the parts online, and get up to a pace of one car a month for the rest of 2018.  Make sure you’re following us on Facebook @sportscarsalvage and on Twitter @fastwrecks for updates!

Think Spring!

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1989 Chrysler LeBaron Convertible Turbo – Our Next Part Out

February 11, 2018 | Posted in 1989 Chrysler LeBaron Turbo, Parts Cars | By

This 1989 Chrysler LeBaron GC Turbo will be our next part-out.  Everything works, car was T-boned and has a salvage title. Engine runs strong and builds boost.

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1994-1998 Ford Mustang Side Scoop Removal

November 11, 2017 | Posted in Helpful Tips, Mustangs | By

I was just asked how you correctly remove the external rear side vent scoops on a 1994-1998 Ford Mustang. They have threaded studs with nuts that must be removed from the INSIDE. Some models have a plastic clip. You need to access these clips or bolts from inside the rear quarter panel. Either behind the interior trim on a coupe or behind the rear vent windows on the convertible. DO NOT JUST TRY TO PULL THEM OFF! They will BREAK! The 1999-2004 use a plastic clip, but it should still be removed from the inside.

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