In my last article, the impression was mostly about the poor response of the used car dealer, so I wrote about it. However, after a little time passes, what was more important was the good response of the dealer who bought it.
In conclusion, the response of a company called “Accident car / scrapped car purchase Tyrod” was very good.I thought about concealing the name… but well, since it’s a good reputation, and as mentioned later, the word “Tyrod” is key, I’ll keep it as it is unless I get angry.
Let’s go back to December 7th of last year. It was the week after the accident.
I was told by the insurance company that there was a high probability of total loss from the upper limit of the car insurance, and I was wondering what to do. Whether to take 900,000 yen for repair and repair/dispose of it myself… or to use the total loss clause and receive 1.21 million yen and hand over the car to the insurance company.
900,000 yen = about 6,000$ / 1,210,000yen = about 8,000$
In other words, there is a difference of 310,000 yen depending on whether or not to hand over the car to the insurance company.
Is this really reasonable? I thought.
And, my current job is a plant engineer. There are various types of plant engineers, such as chemical process and infrastructure… I am in the general industry… in other words, I am in the “other” category.
So, I guess I make various things.
A large part of that is waste products. I have designed plants to process waste, which includes cars.
I have no experience with plants that only process scrapped cars… but they are basically plants that process industrial waste, and many of them also dispose of the remnants of scrapped cars. Industrial waste is, for example, used vending machines, copiers, and the like.
By the way, how do you imagine a car being processed…? Maybe you imagine a machine that crushes it from four directions, like in movies and games, and turns it into a lump of iron? The one where the glass shatters and turns into a block-like lump.
In reality, it’s close to that, but a little different.
First, remove the parts that seem to be usable from the car, and recycle them. This is because there is a certain demand for repair parts and the like.
Next, remove the non-iron parts of simple material. For example, the engine and radiator are made of aluminum, the glass is glass… and so on. For example, since many engines are made of aluminum, there are factories that specialize in collecting scrapped engines and making recycled aluminum.
At this stage, the body becomes a shell with the interior and small parts and wires left to some extent. How much to take varies quite a bit depending on the dealer. Some dealers remove almost everything and make it into a square lump with a press machine like the one mentioned earlier, while others leave the headlights and taillights attached and hand it over in a state that is roughly in the shape of a car.
This body is called “Haisha-gara” (scrap metal) and is circulated in the scrap market.
“Haisha-gara” are useless as they are, so iron collectors buy them, put them in a shredder… not the kind of machine we imagine that shreds paper, but a huge machine that looks like a monster mixer… and crushes them into small pieces the size of a fist.
The iron is then collected from these crushed pieces with a huge magnet.
Nowadays, even major steel manufacturers melt and refine scrap from disposal systems instead of iron ore. This is said to be more eco-friendly as it does not emit carbon dioxide like refining iron ore. That’s why scrap iron sells for a decent price.
On the other hand, a considerable amount of material remains that does not stick to the magnet. This is called dust and is the remnants of the interior materials and sealants (adhesives that were stuck at the seams of the plates, resins and tar that were painted to prevent transmission of vibration and sound. This alone can amount to tens of kilograms.) and cables that were left in the “Haisya-gara”. In the past, there were problems with dealers who tried to bury or burn the dust cheaply after taking only the iron because it cost money to bury or incinerate it in special facilities.
This led to the establishment of the “Act on recycling of end-of-life automobiles” in Japan. A “disposal fee” is paid by the “Automobile Recycling Promotion Center” according to the weight of the “Haisha-gara” processed. At this time, if the factory is not processing in a process approved by the “Automobile Recycling Promotion Center”, it cannot receive the distribution of the recycling fee.
Factories that process in a proper process can buy “Haisha-gara” at a higher price by the amount of recycling fee, so the factories that just want to take the iron were eliminated.
Yes, the money from the “recycling ticket” that is charged when buying a car in Japan, is used here. Because the recycling fee is paid, there is value in processing scrapped cars, even if the cost of processing dust is incurred.
However, those who work in waste disposal are often very smart. They have been trying for decades to find a way to process dust for free or for value. As a result of their efforts, today they use various methods to extract and recover copper and aluminum (such as specific gravity separators and X-ray separators), and they have figured out how to convert plastic into solid fuel for use in thermal power generation and various boilers. Thanks to this, the factories have become more advanced and complex, and there is room for experts like me to help. So, part of my food is coming from the recycling ticket.
…With such a situation, the purchase price of scrapped cars seems to be higher than the same weight of iron. However, this is not always the case, as the supply situation of scrapped cars greatly affects it, and there are times when it is cheaper than iron.
At this point, I often hear that due to the Corona shock and the shortage of new cars due to automakers’ scandals, there are fewer used cars being converted into “Haisha-gara”, and the high prices are painful. There is a shortage of cars overseas as well, and due to the weak yen, even cars that are not needed in Japan are being taken overseas.
<Daihatsu Shock> Daihatsu is a Japanese manufacturer that produces a large number of poor cars designed primarily for transportation. They have gained high popularity in Japan as an ally of the poor-men. However, in 2023, wrongdoing was exposed by an internal whistleblower. And the wrongdoing was serious. For example, ●They were required to conduct collision tests on both the left and right sides, but they only conducted a collision test on one side and copied and pasted the results. ●During the measurement to determine the catalog value, they used a racing car-like tuned-up special engine. ●They conducted collision safety tests by activating the airbags not with the vehicle’s sensors, but with a timer. Because these were not issues of fuel efficiency or emissions, but of safety, some models were banned from production by the government.
Having heard such circumstances, I thought, “Hmm, perhaps the 135i, which weighs over 1.5 tons, might be worth quite a bit right now? The engine is unharmed… The N55B30A engine it carries is also used in the 335i and 535i, so won’t it be worth something as a part?” That’s what I thought.
But, after all, there are various stories about the trouble of picking up a car in reality, so it’s not simple, so I guess I can’t say anything unless I get an estimate.
Here, the bulk estimate often comes up, but I didn’t use it this time.
I decided to look for one main company for now.
Now, the way to find a company to ask for an estimate is simply to search for keywords like “accident car Chiba scrapped car” on Google.
This is just a hypothesis, but since I was considering repair at the same time as looking for this estimate, I think it may be due to the influence of researching about the repair of the damaged part.
This is because I initially thought that the most serious damage to my car was the “tie rod”.
The tie rod is a rod-shaped part that transmits the operation of the steering wheel to the direction of the front wheels.
To be specific… this is a diagram of the parts list for the 135i…
The structure of the steering system… first, as shown in the diagram above, there is a large part called the power steering unit in the middle of the front wheel. A steering shaft that looks like a doodle extends at a right angle to this (protruding into the car), and at the end of it is the steering wheel that we usually hold.
When the steering wheel is turned, the inside of the power steering unit moves left and right accordingly. The inside protrudes from both ends, and in the diagram above, the black bellows part appears to expand and contract according to the movement of the steering wheel.
And, the hub knuckles (the parts that support the tires) are connected to both ends of the power steering unit, and the direction of the tires changes according to the operation of the steering wheel…
The power steering unit is fixed to the body, while the hub knuckle moves relative to the body. This is because the tire moves up and down during driving to absorb shocks.
Therefore, it is connected with a bar that has joints at both ends and can move flexibly. This part is called a “tie rod”.
Here, if you compare the maintenance explanation diagram above with the product photo below, you will see that the end of the tie rod in the parts list diagram ends with a bar. It should have a joint to connect to the hub knuckle.
This is not a mistake in the diagram, but rather that the tie rod is divided into two parts, inside and outside, or rather, one is inserted into the other. I think you can see in the product photo that there is a place to screw in the middle. This is so that the direction of the front wheels can be fine-tuned during maintenance, and the part to be fixed can be changed. (In the Mitsubishi Galant, instead of a bar, it’s a screw, and you screw it in and secure it with a nut… Does BMW’s structure not come out…?)
In this damage, it seems that the inside part also needs to be replaced… But if I can’t buy it unless it’s a set of ②, it’s a big deal. This one set costs 220,000 yen. (However, isn’t this cheap for genuine parts of foreign cars? I also think.)
Well, I found a part number that is sold as a set of inside and outside. It’s in the Repair category, not the Steering category in AutoParts-F.
I had forgotten, but this tie rod is a kind of consumable item. After driving tens of thousands of kilometers, the joint part wears out and becomes loose. This can lead to problems with driving performance, and in the worst case, the joint can come loose, leaving one wheel unsteerable.
During the process of researching this area, I repeated the process of including “tie rod” in the search word many times.
Originally, search results themselves should not be targeted, so even if I had been repeatedly searching for “tie rod” just before, it should not affect the search for other search words…
Hey, even in settings,
Even if personalization is enabled, only autocomplete (suggest) and ads should change… supposedly.
What seems possible is that from the repeated “tie rod” search just before, an ad containing “tie rod” was displayed for the “accident car Chiba scrapped car”…
