speaking of bus scrap...

[travelingfools]

I finally got around to hauling the bus scrap to the Scrap Metal place today....The seats minus the foam and cloth (all but three sets I kept for some unknown reason) fetched me $90.00 . The alum. from the overhead racks payed $164.00 . Ive still got the stainless from the heat and luggage supports that I'm guessing will pay between $175 and $200. This should pay for 4 6 volt house batteries and some liquid gold (in the form of diesel fuel).

[HB of CJ]

Well, if all else fails, we can scrap out our toys for the valuable metal content.  My '74 Crown Super Coach 40-foot 10-wheeler (which I recently sold) had about 6500 pounds of aluminumumumm, some 10000 pounds of high grade steel and around 4000 pounds of iron, plus some stainless.  Do the $math$ with today's high scrap value.  Sossss....I got top dollar when I sold the old girl--not to the scraper, but to another Crown guy.  Now looking for another.....Crown.  He he he. 

[belfert]

My bus had radiators all along the sides for passenger heat.  Between the radiators, air conditioning condenser/evaporator, and window frames I got around $500 at the scrap yard 18 months ago.  I was expecting maybe $100 as I had never been to a scrap yard before.  I got $100 to $200 more for other stuff I removed later like copper tubing from the bus A/C.

[Dallas]

TF,

Those seats have stainless steel frames and cast aluminum foot rests, along with chrome plates steel screws and Aswashers.

The way to maximize the price of your seat frames would have been to separate everything out.

After a phone call my wife made today, scrap prices in Chattanooga went as follows:
  Cast Aluminum: 68¢/lb
  Sheet Aluminum: 72¢/lb
 
  mild steel: $10.25/100 lbs.
  Stainless Steel: $1.05/ lb.

If there is any part of the scrap that you haven't cleaned... clean it. Even one little piece of steel in a lot of Stainless will cause you to get "Dirty" scrap prices.

I've watched a fellow down in Chattanooga go so far as to remove the brass fittings from an engine block because the iron will sell for more if it isn't contaminated by any other metal.
Interesting also is that if you put all those brass fittings in a bucket, it doesn't take very long to come up with a full bucket at about 60 lbs.

When doing the old copper pipe and tubing... if there is solder on it... heat it and remove it. Otherwise it is considered dirty copper.

There are a lot of ways to increase your income from the old bus. When I replaced the wiring in our bus, (all of the 120V and a lot of the 12V), I had a pile that weighed in at over 250 lbs. A neighbor was having trouble paying his lot rent so I told him he could have it if he stripped the insulation.
He took it, and two weeks later I found it in the campground dumpster... still with the insulation on it. This was a pile of everything from 2 gauge to 16 gauge copper.