How to Scrap old gennys and starters

Should a person take them apart and hope to get a better price, or leave them whole?
Thank you
SDE

I was standing in a (well equipped auto electric store (Red's Auto Electric" St. Cloud) and watched an employee remove copper from armatures and fields from failed starters. In addition my Brother works for a motor rebuilder. they would never recycle mixed steel/Iron/Copper. Jim

Guess that would depend on how much time you were willing to invest in sorting it out. The scrap yards do it, but they have large volumes that would make it worthwhile.

Personally, I wouldn't want to... Nasty job, one trip to the ER would cancel a whole bunch of sorting!

Kind of depends on what your local yard is paying. We have two yards in this area and there is a bit of spread between clean copper vs. breakage. I haven't looked at prices in a while although I'm aware they are down.

IIRC, last time I threw out some motors they were like 30 cents a pound and clean copper was something like 2 dollars. You would have to figure out how much of the weight was actually copper vs. the iron in the thing. If there's a pound of copper in each thing and it takes 15 minutes to extract said copper then you are at 8 bucks an hour. Of course this all based on my fuzzy memory and hypothetical numbers.

The way these things usually work out for me is that it will take 30 minutes to take all apart and then have 1/2 lb of copper in it!

Back to my story: I sold them whole motors and did something else with my time. The yard has a whole cadre of min wage employees and specialized equipment for busting things up.

Your mileage will vary.

Depending upon just what they are they may worth more as a core than for scrap.

My time is worth too much. I get $.10/# for crap motors.

I scrap everything. When I take a small load to recyclers, I only get $160/ton for rust, but it's my largest amount on the ticket. The valuable stuff only adds up to a few buck.

I separate the copper for recycling. One winter I tore apart automatic transmissions for the aluminum. I hauled in over 3 tons of aluminum. Scrap man said the load was worth more than my pickup!

I think they run them through a large shredder and then a magnetic separator, much quicker. I sold some old motors years ago when the price was up, everything is down now.

I would separate scrap. Since copper is worth a LOT more than steel, tin, heavy iron, etc. I do strip whatever I take in for that reason.
As far as time and the value of that time goes, unless I would have been doing something that would make me MORE money during that time, then the time would otherwise be wasted. And in separating the materials, I would be making money that would otherwise be lost - even if it is only 3 cents an hour. That is about like finding money on the street. My time costs me nothing. Anything I get above that is pure profit.

I have an "auto core" buyer near me (basically a small scrapyard) that gives me $4.00 each for starters and alts. small car sized. HD truck tractor pay more. My local scrapyard was giving only .20 / lb.

As stated below, depends on the value of your time. If its time spent watching TV or sitting on a bar stool, its definately worth while to strip the copper out seperately. If its time you would have spent getting the last of the hay in before it rained - forget about it.

Your answers are close to what I had expected. I know with copper wire, it seems that it is a waste of time to strip the small stuff, because the extra weight times the lower price is about equal to the lower weight times the higher price.
I will check into the possibility of sell them as cores. Thank you
SDE

I am tearing down a house trailer,the siding,50gal of cans and a car battery brought 101.00. $15.00 worth of gas to get it there. Better than nothing, but about .05 an hour getting it.

When I was a younger man (not that I'm all that old now) just out of high school, working at a minimum wage job, trying to make it in life I did a lot of scrapping. I tried the removing copper from electric motors..

I tried several different approaches to get it out and none were all that easy (or super successful) for me as I recall. The things I recall trying are "burning" it to burn the adhesive coating, cutting the armature in 2 with a chop saw, snip and dig with side cutters.. I was a teenager, and I'm sure I tried several other destructive ideas to make it happen.. I had to have tried a hammer in there somehow, a hammer fixes every issue.

I'm sure there may be smarter ways that would make it easier however. Seems like I tore apart a couple dozen motors of various sizes, and for the life of me, I don't think it filled up a 5-gallon bucket..

Fast forward 15 years: Just today I took in a load of scrap.. I think there was 4 electric motors and one alternator.. 10 cents/LB, compared to the 4 cents/lb "shred" is bringing.. Took me about 2 minutes to load em, about 3 minutes to unload and weigh em.. 78 pounds, $7.80.. or $1.56 per minute.. I'm happy, they're out of my hair. Not worth a special trip, but since my dump trailer was full, I decided to load everything up.

That said, when it comes to starters/generators: I buy a lot of junk tractors, combines, trucks, etc. to part out.. I pull every starter, generator, alternator and take them to my local auto-electric rebuilder.. I tell him up front what I want to put in them per item. He tests em, cleans em up, does what needs done, and I sell them as either "good working" or "rebuilt", depending on extent of the repairs done to each piece. The units that are not financially feasible to repair I bring home and stick on the shelf.. maybe later down the line I can steal a good part out to fix a different broken unit, or I sell em as a core.

Sorry for the long post. Good luck in whatever you decide to do.. Depending on your location, I'd might be interested in purchasing them if you don't want to take the time to tear em all apart.

Brad