Every car has a story. It’s in the way the driver’s seat is permanently grooved to its owner, the seemingly inconsequential coffee stain on one side of a passenger seat, radio presets that take you back and invisible dings and scrapes from years of hauling cargo. It’s a story of everyday commutes, family road trips and incredible service. But for every car, that narrative ultimately ends. It might be a sudden judder to a halt on the Perth highway or a sneaky, steady splutter in the driveway as vital systems disintegrate.
For others, such a revival is fatally short-lived. A wreck, or a broken car, feels like an issue, like an eyesore. But here at WA Auto Parts, we see things differently. In our case, this is not the end; it’s an amazing new beginning. It’s the start of a cautious, interesting and environmentally crucial process.
Welcome to WA Auto Parts, your leading used auto parts buyer, seller and wrecker in Perth’s Western Australia. For the last 15+ years we’ve built not just a thriving business, but also one of the major building blocks of our resilient community. We also challenge you to look past the “wreck” and with us take a peak behind the scenes of what this car became in it’s gut: GOLD… An unfathomable process for recyclable parts and scrap materials! That, too, is the unfolding journey we see daily.
Stage 1: Arrival and Check-In
It begins the moment a truck eases into our bustling Perth yard. It might come in trailing the stink of a crash with jagged, warped frame tubes; it could arrive under its own power at the hands of an owner who treated it well for years before finally losing interest in a trusty old but outdated steed. Each has its own story, and the first thing we need to do is listen to it and treat it with respect.
Our team, our professional one in person, is meeting the owner, walking them through something we’ve make easy and seamless. All the paperwork reporting and dealing with all relevant bodies, from proving your ownership of the car to emailing you a receipt of deregistration is done so entirely legally in under 24 hours. We appreciate that parting with a car, and especially one with its own story can be quite emotional for some people so we look to make the whole process as easy and stress-free as possible.
The initial examination begins once your car is in our hands, and the older more experienced pros begin assessing. This is where, in fact, our 15 years of history start to matter. Our crew doesn’t behold a wrecked car; it sees nested tiers of potential. They can look at a quite new Japanese SUV, a slightly older Australian 4WD, something like one of the vans available in Europe with all the gear on it, a fairly plain well priced Korean car and of course that big Yank truck and work out what they are worth in no time flat!
Is the block still good? Is the transmission viable? How are the alternator, starter motor and so forth? Are the body panels, doors and lights salvageable? It’s that initial triage process of when a car arrives with us and directing its journey through our facility to ensure we’re able to seek the best possible value recovery from it, for both our customers and for the planet.
Step 2) THE DE-POLLUTION BAY – CLEAR THE THREAT
Well before a single salvageable part is removed from any of the over 50,000 vehicles we process each year, every vehicle that comes into our yard makes its first stop at what we consider to be the most important station in our yard: The Depollution Bay. That’s the very minimum requirement of our environmental pledge. A car in fact is awash with life giving fluids, all of them life sustaining for the operation of your car but some also potentially fatal if not treated properly within our WA conditions.
This is where our techs are working with the skill of microsurgeons. This is no messy drain-training operation. It’s a tidy, clean process too that will save the dregs of your vape juice in a manner that won’t destroy you. We drain the:
Fuel: Gasoline and diesel are carefully siphoning into approved, safe tanks.
Engine Oil & Trans Fluids – The engine and transmission fluids are drained, then stored for collection by select recycling entities.
Coolant (Antifreeze): This toxic liquid is captured so that it won’t end up in the land or water.
Brake & Steering: All lines are totally empty.
But it doesn’t end there. We remove the car battery, made with lead and corrosive acid, and send it to licensed recyclers who can reclaim its precious parts. We also meticulously comb through, and extract parts with mercury — such as old car switches — and disarm airbags, which are packed with chemical propellants.
“And that degree of depollution is our promise to Perth and the environment. It’s a firewall ensuring that the legacy of a car is one, not of waste or environmental contamination but rather value and repurposing.
Stage 3: The stripping station – Kind pickture pfection
Now that the car is clean and sound, it’s time to harvest. This is where WA Auto Parts really leaves all the other wreckers in Perth behind. Busy beeLike a busy little worker bee in its hive, we set about our car-dismantling station and begin the process of removing the vehicle limb by limb.Our head technicians don’t waste any time when it comes to tearing that car down; salvaging every clean part and make it work for us!
This is an expertise that requires a profound, hands-on understanding of the auto engineering. Our professionals service a broad selection of makes and models- from European vehicles to Japanese, American, Korean and Australian automobiles including SUVs 4WDs trucks vans wagons & utes. This gives them the know-how and the perspective they need to figure out what matters most, whether that’s the high-performance engine that goes into a Ford Ranger or the premium headlight assembly used in a Volkswagen Golf or even just the reliable transmission installed in a Toyota Camry.
The process is strategic:
Valued Bits and Pieces: W e carefully remove the “heart and soul” of the vehicle which starts with our strong running engine and transmission. These are the core parts and can give a new life to another vehicle. The recovered, metal-filling catalytic converters are also valuable.
Mechnical/Electronic Parts: We haul off the extras alternator, starter, radiator, a/c compressor and brakes then send them in for recycling.
Body & Interior: Finally we recycle body panels, doors, bumpers headlights and taillights, mirrors and interior items including seats dashboards and radios.
And — critically — “salvaged” is not the same as “dumped in a giant pile.” Each portion of meat we extract is the result of a strict quality control program. We carry out a full cleaning, inspection & test to ensure the product is in complete working order. It is then given a traceable inventory number in our large storage facility and shipped to you.
This is the perfectionism that lets us stand behind the finest used car parts in all of Maywood and give you them at the best price there is. So when they call us on (08) 9358 1392 and ask for a certain part, “We can look it at up in our system right away and check its quality then get it here for them. That’s our business in a nutshell: offering a smarter, healthier, more sustainable alternative to buying new.
Phase 4: The Final Frontier (or, As An Alternative, That Breakdown) — Hulkbro gets broken down later into fodder.
After my mechanics have picked over all of the usable parts, the car becomes nothing but an empty shell — its hulk. But it too is hardly waste. This is where the real hard-core recycling gets under way, grinding down every last shred of the car into materials that can be melted or otherwise converted into a new something else.
Non-metal parts where possible are removed after the hulk is washed, including foam in seats or rubber window seals. There, it is run through what is essentially the most powerful washing machine in our yard: the crusher and shredder. In a display of brut force, the entire frame is flattened and then feed into a shredder, which rips it to shreds about the size of fists in thousands of jagged metal chunks.
It seems a pretty frantic conclusion but is in fact the route to that ultimate bright processional step. As the cut pieces flow through a series of conveyor belts, they pass through a suite of advanced separation methods:
Powerful Magnets: Huge magnets remove all steel (a ferrous metal) from the flow.
Eddy Currents: The remaining material that has filtered through is subjected to a magnetic field and non-ferrous metals will be rejected knocking the useful aluminium away into another storage bin.
Floatation/Air Separation: Only the lightest particles – mostly plastics and fibers in a fraction labeled auto shredder residue – are separated using air jets and wet flotation techniques.
The other sorted materials (a stack of high-quality steel, a mountain of pure aluminum and so on) can then be sold to mills or refineries, where they are melted down and recycled into new goods. The steel from an old sedan may become rebar in a new high-rise, and the aluminum in its engine block could emerge as part of a new soda can or even another car coming off an assembly line.
Conclusion: A Closed-Loop System
We issue the receipt in silence.”) From over here, following this broken car through our gates until it’s shredded back into raw materials again, seven minutes down a thin metal tube; all of sleek green transit and thundering recycle machinery screams both creativity and accountability. Where once there was one vehicle, now there are two important but distinct product flows.
One of the sources?The first of these rivers floods our WA Auto Parts store shelves with a floodplain-like supply of quality-assured, recycled parts; keeping Perth vehicles on the road, saving our customers money “ and perhaps most importantly of all: reducing production’s colossal environmental cost.
The second stream is a flow of raw materials ready to be recycled back into global industry without going through the destructive process of mining and energy-intensive refining from fresh ore.
That’s the circular economy as a living example. It’s a closed-lib system — nothing is trash, and everything could have been found useful in another time. And as a family-owned wrecker in the system for over 15 years, we’ve been proud to be a part of it.”
So the next time you need a part for your car, or it’s time to say goodbye to an old vehicle, we hope you think about this adventure. We hope you will choose the path of sustainability, affordability and responsibility.
So for a quote on your car or to find that special used part from our big selection, simply call the friendly WA Auto Parts team today on (08) 9358 1392.