Somewhere on the service truck, back at the dealership, or in the shop at home, every mechanic has a personal treasure trove. Many of those treasures are parts left over or salvaged from repair jobs. Others were rescued from the dumpster when thrown away by customers or other mechanics.
Some of my favorite things to salvage include the following:
• Any hydraulic plug or cap, especially the plastic caps and plugs that come on new fittings, hydraulic hoses or hydraulic valves. They’re great to temporarily plug hydraulic components during repairs or transport for repairs. Especially treasured are metal, flat-face O-ring-style caps and plugs, or metal flared caps or plugs, that will seal against pressure. I’ve been known to pay $25 a piece just to have a specific size of flat-face plug/cap that will seal against pressure so I can cap lines during testing — but most of my other plugs like that were scavenged and now hoarded like gold.
• Metal pipe. In my experience, there is no such thing as “scrap pipe.” Whether it’s the four-foot-long piece of two-inch i.d. thick-wall pipe that’s now my favorite “cheater handle” for my breaker bars (“Why no, Mr. Snap-on Dealer, I NEVER use a cheater handle on any of my tools…), or a nice piece of five-inch i.d. steel pipe that’s going to be part of a homemade jackstand someday, I’ve never seen a piece of pipe that deserves to be thrown away.
• Refugee parts. Be honest — we’ve all got boxes full of bearings, bushings, housings and other stray parts that were left over, mis-ordered, or salvaged from jobs. They’re technically “off-inventory” but they save our fanny when the Parts Department doesn’t have the exact part we need, or we can’t afford to wait a week for distant parts to arrive. Hoarded left-over parts, or “Oops, I forgot to return this” parts, stashed in our personal, super-secret, “For Our Eyes Only” drawer or compartment are often the difference between being a disappointment or a hero to our customers.
Like I said, there’s no such thing as “junk” to a road mechanic. Just valuable parts and pieces that haven’t yet found their proper place in our world.
Dan Anderson is a heavy-equipment mechanic and freelance writer based in Bouton, Iowa.
