Denver Alley Scavengers Scrap-Maddened By Torqueflite Visible In Yard, Camouflage Only Option
These days, with scrappers paying $240/ton (the going rate in Denver; I hear it’s similar elsewhere) for cars and steel car parts, we’ve seen an explosion in the numbers of guys cruising around in hooptied-out minivans, pickups and the occasional bicycle with trailer, looking for metal. The older parts of the Denver urban core, where I live, have alleys between streets, and so the scavengers (I call them Jawas) spend their days patrolling these alleys in search of stuff they can turn into cash at the scrapper. It turns out that these guys can smell a transmission as they pass by, even one that’s behind a gate and barely visible.
My ’66 Dodge A100 van has proven to be a useful car-parts-and-lumber hauler, though I still haven’t made much progress on my 70s-style customization project. It has only one major mechanical headache, and that’s a transmission that leaks from every possible location; the van sat for 15 years before I got it, and all the seals and gaskets are bad. Replacing the pan gasket solved about 50% of the problem, but that’s really not enough. Normally, I’d just go to the junkyard and pick up another Torqueflite 727 from one of any number of easy-to-find dead Chryslers, but the A100 used a funky van-and-RV-only top-of-the-tailshaft rear mount. My plan is to rebuild the leaky 727, but I don’t want to immobilize the van while I’m learning the black art of slushbox rejuvenation.
Then my friend Andy, owner of a big yard full of interesting vehicles picked up a rusted-to-hell A100 with a good transmission.
I traded him these catalytic converters (hacked from a Lexus SC400 that served as the suspension donor for my 1941 Plymouth project) for his A100’s transmission, and now I just need to get around to doing the swap.
In the meantime, I stashed the transmission next to my garage. Whoops, forgot to bend the cooling lines up high enough, so there’s a bit of a melted-snow-and-transmission-fluid stain beneath it now.
But then the Jawas started catching sight of the Torqueflite through the (locked) gate. It’s not worth busting a padlock to get $12 worth of scrap, so my doorbell started ringing. “I’ll help you dispose of that unwanted transmission!” Then the notes appeared in my mailbox.
An old sheet will keep the transmission invisible until I put it in the van.
You can tell something is there, but it doesn’t look quite so metallic. What happens, though, when scrap steel gets to $1000/ton?
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Nice alley! Much prettier than my Bluebird District alley. Swapping my Gen 5 Accord's engine with a 6th Gen's out back, I'm on a first name basis with a few of the scrappers and a head nodding basis with some of the others. Same deal: I leave any scap out for them. In turn they tend to leave my other stuff alone. The opposite problem is nearby Aurora's large-item disposal policy. Aurora charges for mattress & furniture pickup while Denver does quarterly large-item pickup for free. So our alleys tend to be the recipients of those items trucked in from Aurora & dumped at 2am.
Everything that Bigoldchryslers said was correct. But if you are already pulling the trans and want to learn how to rebuild them then you may as well while the opportunity is there. Torqueflites, both the 904 and 727 are pretty easy to rebuild. Use good quality parts, such as Kevlar clutches and the trans should last practically forever. The 318 will never kill that 727. A cheap upgrade is a pan from a 518. It's 3 inches deeper for more fluid capacity, and uses a modern reuseable gasket. Be sure to get the 3 inch filter spacer used in the 518 so that the filter will be low enough in the deeper pan. While it's apart you may also want to upgrade to a 4 or 5 gear planetary gear set. It's not necessary, but a bit of overkill is often a good thing. Even the 8 gear planetaries from the cummins equipped 518 will fit, but totally unnecessary unless you get them for free.