Where are you all getting these great deals or finding decently priced engines?

car-part? Are they complete?
Craigslist?

etc.

looking to pick one up. Needs some help!

 

In my area we have a local pull your own salvage yard, Engines with all accessories and harness ran $260 plus a $50 core charge and they had a 30 day warranty.

 

that’s a good idea. I’m going to look into that.

you drive right up to it or you dragging / doing something to bring it back to check out?

 

Depends on what type of engine you're looking for.

Most salvage yards pull the hard to find and expensive engines (LS7, LS3, LS2, LS6 etc.) and list them for sale at a premium price. The truck engines are plentiful especially the LM7 5.3 engine. If you're lucky you can find 6.0 LQ4's before someone else gets to it. If you're really lucky the LQ9 out of an Escalade, SS Silverado or V-MAX Sierra.

 

Depends on the location, At ours you could put it in a wheel barrow or leave it on the hoist and roll it to the gate and set it in your pickup.

I worked for our local yard for 5 years, We never got LS7,LS3,LS2,LS6 engines because the cars we got were from salvage auctions and those cars sold for a premium and weren't bought because there was no way to make a profit. Salvage yards that do buy those cars are not pick your own yards and don't sell engines for one price and that's the reason. They aren't going to pay 3-5k for a wrecked Corvette just to sell the engine under $300
We bought 150-300 cars a week so if you really wanted a 6.0 you could check daily and eventually find one. I know we scrapped a few that nobody bought because it was to cold for people to bother pulling them. Funny thing is, I worked there for 5 years and only bought 3 6.0 engines, I usually found better deals on craigslist or from other sources. Sometimes it pays to buy a whole truck and pull the engine and part out the rest to get most if not all the money back.

 

LKQ pulls the good stuff and lists at a premium price, then lets us stragglers pick the bones of what's left. You can find Porsche, Lotus, Jaguar, Hellcat Hemi's, LS3's etc. engines at LKQ but not out in the yard. But I do get where you're coming from.

 

Ebay. Complete drop-outs shipped to your door for $1,000. Much easier this way.

 

Maybe you misunderstood what I meant, They sell them for a premium price because they pay a premium price for those cars, Most but not all pick and pull type places have set price structure and a set price they are willing to pay for those parts cars, That doesn't mean they only sell parts at a set price, If there is money to be made on a car they will buy it.

I have been out of that line of work for about three years, When I left most cars we bought were in the $200 range with fees and we frequently bid against LKQ Omaha's buyer. Believe me they are not getting those high end cars cheap even if they look like a scrape pile, There are dozens of other yards to bid against plus rebuilders and private buyers so nothing of real value sells cheap. Most of our stock was either low end generic cars/truck that are at least 10+ yrs old or newer low end cars that took an exceptionally hard hit, LKQ sell the same type of vehicles,
What they put in the yard is the car that is bought at scrap price, They pull the aluminum wheels if they have any and pull the cats and put in the yard for a couple weeks hoping someone buys some of the parts. The bones you speak are cars/trucks they paid a premium price for and already sold anything of value and put the rest out to get every last dollar out of it, That's how they make their money.
Whenever we got cars/trucks in that had more value as a fixer upper we would sell those in different area and I believe LKQ does the same.
Most people seem to think that late model cars can be bought really cheap but that rarely the case, I saw a hellcat that hit something so hard that it shoved the engine back about a foot and the roof was cut off to extract the driver, Basically the only straight parts were the deck lid and both quarters, It sold for almost 7k. You'd have to sell quite a few parts at a premium price to make a profit on something like that.

 

Until you get a junk engine and have little options because they are hundreds of miles away.

 

Thank you all for the responses!

 

Obviously you know nothing of eBay. eBay only makes money if people are buying stuff, so eBay and PayPal always side with the buyer. Always. It’s so bad that it’s become an easy scam for buyers to scam sellers, so sellers have to go out of their way to protect themselves in all sorts of creative ways or just simply not use eBay. eBay is very much a buyer’s market and the buyer is well protected. You will win your claim if you file one.

I’ve only had to file a claim a handful of times the past 18 years I’ve been using the site and not only have I never lost, but eBay themselves has even refunded me once when a mixup happened on a shipment and the package got lost. “The customer is always right” that’s how you get people to return.

 

You're not telling me anything I don't already know lol, I was a commercial seller on Ebay for over a decade and have been buying and selling on my personal account for almost twenty years. Unless the seller offers free return shipping and they rarely do on large/heavy items the buyer will be out the cost of return shipping and that's only if the seller offers a warranty and many do not. You are right though, Sellers are dumping E-Bay because it's getting harder to make a profit unless you do high volume sales.
The biggest issue with buying a used engine from ebay is that your paying more for the same engine you can get locally and most people don't install them right away and by the time they do the window for filing a claim has closed. Besides who wants to pay $1,000 for a 5.3 from E-bay when you can buy one local for about $300

 

I went 6.0 on Ebay and had it cleaned up. 5.3’s are cheaper though.