Normally, we don’t spend a lot of time at junkyards on our roadtrips. We’ve had bad luck. Like the time in 2009 when we were ASSURED that the used Passat fender would be ready to hang, but the junkyard in Grand Rapids totally lied. Also, we tend to not have any time to dink around pulling parts.
But this trip was different. We smoked a deer in Saskatchewan and it blew up our whole front end. We repaired it with duct tape and it looks pretty good, but if we could find a replacement bumper cover at a junkyard, that would be amazing. While at the hotel in Moose Jaw, Glenn found an amazing thing. He found a 1998 Chrysler T&C that is gold colored and full of usable parts. AND, it was on our path back to L.A. What a find!
He reserved not only the bumper cover, but also the broken fog light, inner fender, wiring harness, and other parts as well. They gave him a decent price, and they parked the junked van right in front for us. In fact, this van was 1000x better condition than Glenn’s own van. No rust or nothing. Too bad the yard already shredded the title, otherwise it would be totally worth towing back to Wisconsin.
We got to the junkyard, and there was a guard dog driving around the yard. These Oregon dogs are really advanced.
We got all the parts needed, and was able to situate them in the backseat of the van, so we didn’t have to move any grease or cubes. Since we were planning on driving the rest of the way all the way to Los Angeles that day, we didn’t need the rear bench seat anymore.
