I love prowling the junk yards looking for old van stuff. Problem is in my area, when the price of scrap was up several years ago, the yards crushed all the older vehicles.
These are some of my finds so far. Going to another yard later this week to go snoop a bit too. I'll grab some pics while I'm there. I've been slowly grabbing parts as I can afford to do so. I grabbed the front clip off the green and white two tone van already, will be going back for more parts as soon as I can.
Some great parts left on them vans, is that a Venturi Vent? I hate to see when they double deck these vehicles, literally crushing a lot of good parts. Some of these workers in the yards I have been to, take great pleasure in running the skidder forks through the sides of the vehicles, and act like they are in a demolition derby. One thing I have found, they mostly sell these van parts for pennies on the dollar. The one salvage yard I go to yearly, the owner tells me, I am the only guy who has any interest in the old vans. If he gets a Mid-Dodge in he will stash it in a corner of the yard till I can get a look at it. Later in the 1980s when a lot of these 70s vans started showing up in the yards there was a treasure trove of parts to be had. My wife always says, I have 5 Mid-Dodge's, I just need to put the other 4 together.
Some great parts left on them vans, is that a Venturi Vent? I hate to see when they double deck these vehicles, literally crushing a lot of good parts. Some of these workers in the yards I have been to, take great pleasure in running the skidder forks through the sides of the vehicles, and act like they are in a demolition derby. One thing I have found, they mostly sell these van parts for pennies on the dollar. The one salvage yard I go to yearly, the owner tells me, I am the only guy who has any interest in the old vans. If he gets a Mid-Dodge in he will stash it in a corner of the yard till I can get a look at it. Later in the 1980s when a lot of these 70s vans started showing up in the yards there was a treasure trove of parts to be had. My wife always says, I have 5 Mid-Dodge's, I just need to put the other 4 together.
Yeah, I've been lucky enough to be getting my parts super cheap so far too. Yeah that's a Venturi Vent, but it looks like it's in super rough condition. I'm going to snag it anyway. Howard Furtak told me that weird tube grill and headlight bezel combo was a company called Stull. Apparently pretty hard to find nowadays, so I'm going to grab that soon. Whatever I don't end up using off the front clip I grabbed for the 71-77 swap, I'm thinking about putting that grill on it and doing a custom paintjob on it, then turning it into a stand up bar.