Today my dad and I went to the junkyard because my car needs a new fuel pump. It's a 1994 Toyota Camry with a 2.2L engine, one year older than myself.
In theory, not that old (I still have time right??) but pretty old for a car. This car is on its last limbs so it's really not worth spending a lot of money on it, which is why we get used parts from the junkyard.
You can find a great many treasures at the junkyard if you look on the floors of the cars, under the seats, and in the trunk. Today, I'm looking for lead and zinc to reuse and melt. As I said in my previous foundry posts, you can find these metals in the form of weights that are used to balance the rims. You need to look for older cars because they will even have lead weights, which aren't used anymore because of its toxicity. Zinc is more common but the most common is iron, which is useless to me. Iron melts at 2800° F or 1538° C, which is too high a temperature for my charcoal powered foundry.
Here are a few of the slightly older cars I saw.
They're not that old but they're some of the oldest here, and I like them.
Most rims are already removed but there's plenty of stray ones laying around.
How's your knowledge of basic chemistry?
I ask because on the weights are usually a few letters indicating what metal it is.
This one says Fe. On the periodic table of elements, Fe is the symbol for the element Iron. I remember this because another word for metal in Spanish is fierro . Just iron, so let's move on.
"P" is likely an abbreviated sign for lead, whose chemical symbol is Pb. The symbols usually come from the Latin names of the metals, which is why the symbol is usually similar to the Spanish translation: plomo .
And finally, precious zinc (Zn).
I don't know what FN stands for. It's not an element but I see it a lot. Some of my weights are lead-zinc alloys. Here's today's haul.
Some have letters like T (titanium?) or AL (actual symbol for aluminum is Al but it doesn't feel like aluminum and it doesn't make sense to make a weight out of an extremely light metal).
My search ended when we found some suitable fuel pumps.
They are not found under the hood,
but rather under the back seat, right above the fuel tank.
That's my dad working on it. It's good as new now. The credit goes to my dad. I just helped.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed my trip to the junkyard. A fun place to visit. I even saw about 12 women there today too. It must have been Ladies Night or something...
Well, goodbye and until next time!