Getusedparts.com

What a great website.

I remember once upon a time, when I was driving a gigantic 1969 Lincoln Continental (the slab–sided model with the suicide doors) that I'd purchased for $500, stuff started to fall off or stop working.

It looked just like the one in the picture near the end of this post, a deep green–black color.

First the power motors that adjusted the seats, then other stuff started breaking.

No biggie — I was young and adaptable and the fact that I had to drive in the position the final occupant of the driver's seat had selected before the motor broke wasn't all that great an inconvenience.

The problem was that this was in the early 1980s and you couldn't get replacement parts anymore: they just weren't available.

Well, OK, but then one day something mechanical went out and the car wouldn't run.

I had it towed in to wherever I was taking my car and the guy there said he couldn't get a replacement part because they weren't being made anymore.

I asked him what I should do.

He said find a used replacement part from a junked car of the same model and he'd put it in.

Long story short: I called Leon's Used Auto Parts and Junkyard, a gigantic spread of broken and damaged immobilized vehicles about an hour northeast of Charlottesville on route 29 north.

The guy said he had a car like mine out on the lot.

So I drove up with the broken part and gave it to the guy at the counter, who looked at it silently, turned it over in his hands, grunted, and left the counter to go out back after saying, "Wait here."

Hey, I wasn't going anywhere and I'd cancelled all my appointments for the day (as if).

About a half hour later the guy came back with my part and one that looked just like it.

I paid him whatever it cost and drove back to Charlottesville and gave the replacement part to the mechanic, who said, "That'll work."

It did.

Boy, that was a huge car: it weighed 5,005 lbs. But I digress.

Nowadays I could skip the phone call and the day trip and simply buy the part on this great website.

But hey — don't take my word for it, read what Jason Spitzer had to say about the service, as posted on Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools on July 29.

Get Used Parts

Used auto parts online network

After recently being involved in a minor fender-bender that resulted in a cracked tail light on my Subaru, I found that replacement parts would cost about $300 brand-new.

A thorough web search confirmed that no lower prices could be found for new parts.

Then I thought of trying to find the parts from a junkyard, but soon realized that would involve calling all of the junkyards in my area and then traveling to get the part, if one could be found.

So I did what any person would do in this day and age and searched Google for used or salvaged auto parts and found this website.

Once I entered in the year, make, model of my car and the exact part I needed, I received a phone call a half hour later from a junkyard in Alabama that had exactly what I needed.

They sent me the part for $95, including shipping.

There are several other sites that do essentially the same thing, i.e. use a standardized format to send a parts request to multiple junkyards and salvage lots around the country.

I use this one because it has the nicest interface and I received the best and fastest quote on the parts I needed.

One thing I noticed in using these sites is that they all used the same software for selecting the year, make, model of the car and parts needed.

Some entrepreneurial software company must have identified this niche and they now monopolize the market for this specialized type of software.

You didn't drive that Lincoln: you aimed it.

[via Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools]