How to make money with scrap cars

For sake of argument lets say you have bought a car for parts and are ready to scrap the rest of the car. How much is a car worth in scrap metal? The average car, once drained of fluids and stripped of interiors and what not, weighs 1.3 tons. if you go to  http://www.kitco.com/ you can get a basic idea of how the scrap metal market is doing. another good resource is www.scrapmonster.com . What you are looking for is going to be the price of Aluminum, which will typically be the wheels, platinum, which fills the catalytic converters, and mixed metal, which is the rest of the car body.

A quick glance at these resources will tell you that your money is going to be in the wheels roughly $25-$45 each and the Catalytic converters roughly $50-$100.Pro Tip: European, luxury cars especially, have big heavy cats which means they are worth a  lot more money.

You will want to take off the wheels and sell those as well as the cats separately to a scrap yard that specializes in these items. The frame itself will be the least lucrative part in today's market and may even cost you a few dollars to get rid of.

If you have a scrap car with good tires, those are worth anywhere from $10-$50 a piece.

Other things to consider are alternators and starters. There are a number of business that rebuild these for resale and those can bring in another $20-$50 dollars as well.

This is a really short rundown on how to make money scrapping cars. The real key to making money on scrapping cars is volume.

Pro-Tip: buy cars with papers. No one wants to be on the wrong side of the law and the scrappers are no different. They won't take a car and scrap it unless you have a title in hand.