A great topic to discuss is dirty aluminum. When scrap yards take material in, they look at how clean it is and how difficult it will be to sell the item that they are buying. When something like an aluminum engine block comes in scrap, it might be easy to look at and immediately say, “Wow, that is almost all aluminum,” but then you look at that engine and see all types of steel sticking out of it, and you have to reconsider it all.
Cleaning Dirty Aluminum for Scrap
Dirty items can have glue, rubber, steel, and other metals like stainless or wood attached to them. When you try to sell these items to a scrap yard, you must look around and consider how hard they are to clean.
Most of the time, Aluminum is an excellent material (most of the time) because you can cut it and ensure it is clean when you sell it to your local scrap yard. We have talked about this many times, but having clean material will benefit your wallet and the scrap yard you are selling to because the transaction will go a lot smoother when every grade of scrap is sorted.
There are so many options when looking at some of the pieces and parts of a car for scrap. Whether you scrap the unit as a whole or take it apart for scrap, looking at easy pieces that can be cleaned up for a higher scrap value is a good idea. Aluminum engine blocks and transmissions are an excellent place to look for aluminum scrap. You can remove the different materials to make more money on your scrap metal.
