Best Curbside Finds!

[etard]

I have never done it, but I hear this is the best weekend to find curbside gold. Aperently, a lot of kids get new bikes and throw the old ones out. Is it like trick or treatin, where one nieghborhood has better treats then the next? Does the LBS have good trash in thier bin? What do the pros do? Post up you best finds.

I want to go curbsiding tonite, but I don't think I can convince my girlfriend ( as cool about my tinkering as she has been) to do it. I also can't convince her that a broken office chair and a bmx bike would make a very comfortable way to travel. :lol:

 

[AussieJester]

Post up you best finds.

OK...i have found at least 3 dozen full mountain bikes along with the part bikes, often have front or rear wheel (or both) missing. As new bicycle trailer (one you put kiddies in and tow) Drift trike handful of kids BMX bikes half a dozen push scooters a pocket bike and an electric scooter

I have a 3 seater futon fold out lounge from kerbside along with 3 seater modular lounge (both in EXCELLENT nick) 6 woven EXCELLENT condition floor rugs smallest is 12 foot by 6 foot, HUGE PC corner desk, ~8 P4 PCs in the corner (all working but not up and running) box of keybords and mice .. 4-5 digital set top boxes (all working) same number of DVD plavers (some even with remote control unit!) 2 hydraulic monitor stands 4 air suspended high back office chairs (excellent condition) MagLite torch a George Foreman grill<--use this most nights was still in the box when i found it kerbside! never been used. 100cm flat screen Sony CRT TV, lost count of the number of CRT monitors i have picked up over the years have now started finding LCD monitors LoL how times change...I have 3 Pedestal fans from kerbside, out door gas powered patio heater a Ryobo electric leaf blower, OH steel and glass PC multi level corner desk, had that sold within 30 minutes of listing it on local trading post for 200 bucks haha.. Assortment of wood and metal acrylic plexi and alumnium. Thats only from this year LoL NExt rubbish collection in ~3 months we get two a year in my Shire.

Best advice i can give you is take some hand tools including a saw capable of cutting metal, reciprocating or grinder with cutting disk are the shot, unless you need a whole bike. My mates have utes so we chuck the bikes in the back as are if they didnt i would remove the parts i wanted there and then. Rather than uhm and arghing over something GRAB it and move on, sure enough if you leave it then later decide you do want it it will be gone when you go back to get it, if you have it and realise you dont want it you can always turf it. We often 'upgrade' bikes, if we come across better item we will 'exchange it' so as not too take up room.

Happy scavenging...

KiM

 

[spinningmagnets]

The chairs at the shop where I work are all old crappy trash-day finds. Last week, a non-paying renter moved out of a house, and the owner had laborers clear it out and clean it for re-renting. A huge pile of abandoned crap out by the curb. 4 very nice office chairs (probably purchased cheap at an office auction), old but in perfect condition.

"Information" is one of the reasons ES is so wonderful. A while back I had bought a '63 Ford Falcon in good shape. A web-club told me which salvage yard cars would have front disc brakes that just bolted right up. (new online full kit was $900). I went to the salvage yard and found three mid-70's Granadas and pulled all the parts for $120.

And, there were two teens there who owned 60's Mustangs who were fighting over the front disc brakes from the only V8 Ford Maverick there. I told them the front discs on the Granada's were the same...they didn't know.

I drive a dump truck on occasion, and I am constantly amazed at the stuff piled up to be buried at the landfill. I got a nice tall aluminum ladder that the bottom had been run over by a worktruck. I cut a little off the bottom, and re-attached the feet.

It seems I've always had a pile out back with a couple half-bikes from the curb. My bikes were stolen on occasion when I was a kid (Los Angeles, 1960's) and to have a bike, I had to make one good one from two bad ones. A bike was more than a possession, it was transportation, my ticket to go places...

edit: My neighbor had a 2-year old nice double-disc brake hardtail MTB that he had damaged the derailler. He bought a newer/better one and had planned on fixing the old one to sell it. Got to be time for his family to move, had never fixed it, nobody from Craigslist was interested in a broken bike that week.

I had helped him move furniture into the truck, and he couldn't fit all his stuff! So, he asked if I was interested, all I had on me was $35 cash, I offered to send him more, but he said because of my helping $35 was enough.

 

[zap]

this is the best weekend to find curbside gold

Not necessarily. I've found Christmas has a bit of a trickle effect. Certainly there will be stuff tossed immediately but some stuff won't find it's way to the trash or curb for days/weeks/months.
Here's a hypothetical: Your Aunt Mary sends you a toaster oven for Christmas. You already have a toaster oven but the one she sent if much nicer.
You unplug yours and set it in the garage on top of the mower and start using the new one. The old one sits in the garage till spring when you have to get the lawn mower out to mow the lawn. See?


In my area they have a trash bulk pick up every year and some towns near by will do bulk pick ups 2 or more times per year. The bulk pick ups are were you can really score.

Also try apartments and condos this week and also towards the end of the month when folks may be moving out.

 

[enoob]

craigs list baby . craigs list . this time of year its kids trying to get a buck for their old ride to spend on some bling for the new one. do as is done to me and low ball em see what happens, u can get good bikes for $20

we are the same here, homeowners with curbside pickup are allowed to load up the curb . ill have to check which day it is coming but their will be bikes out .

when i was working alot in north van it was amazing what they were turfing there. rich bastiches.

 

[amberwolf]

Don't forget http://freecycle.org. Everything there will be free. You can post your stuff to get rid of, and you can respond to offers you like. Everyone has their own method to pick who gets what they give away.

 

[dogman dan]

Any colledge, graduation week. Just as many graduate in december nowdays. My wife just brought home one of those little dorm fridges. She works on campus picking up hazardous waste from the labs, so sometimes she scores other trash as she drives around.

 

[etard]

so sometimes she scores other trash as she drives around.

Awesome!! That's what I'm talkin about, " other trash". I remember tumpster diving as a kid at this private boarding school and finding this mysterious book of women: PORN!! It was a good summer. :lol:

Don't forget http://freecycle.org. Everything there will be free. You can post your stuff to get rid of, and you can respond to offers you like. Everyone has their own method to pick who gets what they give away.

I was waitIng for you to chime in man, freecycle is a great idea, but in my area it doesn't really compare to craigslist free section. What is your best find?

Kim,

I think you have us all beat!! I found a pocket bike too, come to think of it, where is that thing? Oh well, it was free. Haha. That's the best part, if you destroy or ruin the chair/bike/whatever later, you can't really be mad, cuz you never paid a dime in the first place!! You know? You Aussies have it lucky where it happens periodically, here it is individually.

 

[amberwolf]

I was waitIng for you to chime in man, freecycle is a great idea, but in my area it doesn't really compare to craigslist free section. What is your best find?

My lathe.
View attachment DSC00438a.JPG
View attachment DSC00440.JPG

Another good one I haven't used yet is this motorcycle suspension fork:
View attachment 2Honda750ForkTop2.JPG

 

[deronmoped]

I get free stuff constantly, my latest find was a brand spankin new set of skis, still in the package. This comes at a good time as I'm going skiing in March.

I agree, Craigslist free section is killer. Can get quite a few things, just have to be persistent and the item your looking for will come up.

Is it not funny, our society has such a overabundance of things, that if you are willing to fix something or use what was popular last year you can probably get it for free.

Deron.

 

[Hyena]

I've scored an assortment of stuff over the years, one of the better finds being a hifi system in perfect working order. I saw it right as the guy dragged it out the front and he said it was all working but he was moving into a unit and had no room for it. The front speakers were 4 ft high and had 12" drivers. Needless to say it was quite a score for a poor uni student back then and it pumped hard for many a party. I also got a good lounge that my sister is still using to this day and is more comfy that the expensive leather one I have at home now! I saw it at a garage sale and they wanted $100 for it. I offered 50 because one of the arms had a little hole in it. The guy said no so I walked away, then came back the next day to find it sitting on his junk pile. Heh.
I also saw a good kayak one day but when I came back with a mates ute it was gone
Scavenging has become quite the sport these days, I know when the clean up is on in our street there's trucks and vans driving by constantly going through everyones stuff. There's one guy with a big dump truck that picks up all the bikes, which is really annoying when I was looking for parts earlier on. I reckon he had no less than 20 bikes all piled up. I dont know what he could possibly use them all for.

I've stopped picking up junk now because I have more computers, amplifiers and other electronic gear than I can use in my workshop. I actually have to donate alot of it back come next junk collection and the wife has banned me from picking up anything else :lol:

 

[Grinhill]

Time for a rant...

The thing that annoys me most about our kerbside cleanups (twice per year) are the annoying people who cut the electrical lead off an otherwise perfectly good appliance, just to get 5c for the copper at the scrap metal merchant. They will also smash the cases of things like microwaves or washing machines or tvs to rip transformers out. Such a waste, and they make the kerbside look like a tornado has been through. These people aren't true re-users/recyclers, they're just trying to make a buck in the quickest way possible.

OK, off my chest now.

 

[jag]

Once a friend and I were dredging the river with a big hook and line. We knew there was all sorts of things thrown into it, and sometimes somebody scored big. So far we had mostly gotten junk; once an old-beyond restorable-moped. While some kids at school had these shiny new Japanese mopeds, we knew our parents would never get us a moped, and with our allowance not even 10 years of savings would do it.

Early on a Sat morning, we hooked something heavy, we pulled the best we could both of us, and eventually our of the reeds and mud a near new Honda 50cc emerged. We were of course as excited as any 15 year old can be. We still had 25m or so of line out and struggled another hour or so to get it through the reeds and bushes and up on the shore. Just as we got it up, brushed off the mud, the father of the owner came by and said his son lost the moped last night. (probably somebody stole it, rode it then dumped it in the river) Without discussion he took it from us youngsters. No reward, no nothing. I never liked adults since then....

 

[amberwolf]

A bit of salvaging of some old computer power supplies and UPSs netted me several pounds of parts (not counting the toroids or transformers!), including these:
bunches of small value caps, diodes, zeners, transistors, mounting screws, heatsinks and clips (and thermal pads), and lots of resistors not yet taken off the boards (not in pic), several TL431A and some LM317


Some very old 100V+ Vce type transistors in PNP and NPN, off some boards from a Sony VTR (I never saw the VTR, just the boards)
View attachment 2
They'll be used to replace some lower voltage 2222's on my 2QD so I can up it to 48V+ usability.

Bunches of small signal transistors, 50V Vce types, a bit better than the 2222 but not much.


A few beefy dual-diode (common cathode) units, one of them up to 40V at 50A!

Also about three times that many smaller TO220 versions of these, mostly in the 40V 3A range. All can be used with heatsinks to parallel unequally-charged battery packs in a pinch.

Of course, there are lots of large caps, too, in low and high voltages, and many form factors.

MOSFETs; lots of them, too, though mostly lower-voltage types, and generally fairly high RDSon.

Some IC's, too. Optoisolators, LM339 and LM324 chips, other single or double op-amp chips, some logic chips (74x series), some "house branded" chips in the UPSs which probably means they're ROMs or pre-programmed MCUs. Some standard PWM SMPS control chips, might be adaptable as controller chips.

Transformers, connectors, toroids, cables, wire, heatsinks, switches, LEDs, etc. Fans, too, but the fans are all defective. They might have usable hall sensors in them, though, as long as I don't need linear sensors (they're more likley to be switching types).

Most of the desoldering was done by carefully using a very small propane torch to heat the thru-hole lead areas, while gently tapping the PCB on the bench (outside, so any fumes would not suffocate me). Some things required a solder-sucker and regular soldering iron.

I should be able to build up my other 2QD controller out of what's there, plus have plenty left over for other projects for a while to come, such as a BLDC controller.

There are LOTS of electronics that have all this stuff salvageable if you have time to do it. I generally spend only a minute or two at a time, over days or weeks, and end up with what looks like "Christmas at the parts store". Even if only half the parts worked when done, it'd have saved me enough money it'd stil be worth it.