5 Things to Know When Selling a Car for Parts Online

Drive around any parking lot and you’ll see at least a few cars with signs in the window advertising the vehicle for sale, even though this tactic rarely works. These days, you need to be selling online whether you’re getting rid of a fairly new vehicle or selling a car for parts. When you’re looking to get rid of your old vehicle, you need to know the differences between ways you could be selling your car online.

Here are five things to remember when you’re considering selling your car and its parts.

1. Don’t Expect Much

When you’re setting out to sell your used car for parts online, you can’t expect to make a fortune. While a running version of your car might be worth $10,000, one that doesn’t move is going to be worth just a fraction of it. You need to adjust your expectations before you start selling.

The kind of people who buy cars for parts are likely to just want a few of the parts rather than the whole busted vehicle. That means that they’re not going to want to spend very much on the vehicle. However, if you know what’s wrong with your car, you might be able to get a good price by telling the potential buyer what needs to be replaced.

Buyers will try to haggle you if you have a very firm price in mind. Come up with a soft limit and a hard limit for how low you’re willing to go on your vehicle. Ask for the soft limit but if they try to haggle you below your hard limit, don’t say yes or you’ll end up regretting it.

2. You Might Make More Parting It Out

Rather than trying to sell the whole car in one go, you might make more money selling individual parts. If you know your car pretty well, you might make several times the amount you’d get trying to sell the whole used car on its own. There are often some lucrative parts in a car that are still in good condition even after it stops running.

Get some tools or work with a friend to remove some of the best parts that your car has. Look online to see which parts of your car need to be replaced most often and check to see the condition that your parts are in. If they’re still in fairly good condition, you’ll be able to get a reasonable price for those parts.

Taking the time to part out your car is going to be a learning experience as well. You’ll learn not only how your car runs but how cars like yours run. You’ll find out where some of the common weaknesses are and you’ll make better decisions with your car buying in the future as a result.

3. Look for Rare OEM Parts

Looking online, you can often find whole forums devoted to the kind of make or even the model that you drive. There are often some specialized OEM parts that make a car unique. They might end up making it to future iterations of that vehicle or they might not.

If those parts are discontinued and people happen to love the kind of car you have, you could make serious money selling the parts. Some OEM parts are manufactured by third-party companies for cheap and then the market is flooded and the price drops. For some rarer models, it’s not worth the effort to reverse engineer the parts and try to sell them, so the only one making the part is the original company.

If your car is laden with several rare parts on an especially well-loved model, the people trying to keep that vehicle on the road for years will be your market. They’ll be willing to pay top dollar for replacement parts that are hard to find but in great condition. If your car has any of these parts, put them online and you’ll bring home serious bucks.

4. Think Outside the Box

While you’re dismantling your car, you should think outside the box. There are people other than car aficionados who are using car parts to make things. A cursory look on Etsy will show you hundreds of interesting products made from old car parts.

Chrome Industries, which started off making messenger bags that were built to last, started off using seat belts as the straps for their bags. Knowing that these elements were built to withstand serious impact and pressure, they found that these were great elements to include in their products.

If you’re wondering what could be done with your old number plate, it turns out there are ways to do things with them once your car is out of commission. Check out this page for some tips on what you could be doing.

5. Beware of Multiple Listings

If you get really into the process of selling your car for parts, you might get overzealous and start listing your parts everywhere. You need to be careful, however, because multiple listings could lead to multiple sales for a single part. You’ll be kicked out of a forum or off of a marketplace if you consistently fail to deliver.

If you’re listing on a marketplace and then on a site like Craigslist, you can get away with it since there’s no “buy” button on Craigslist. This is a smart way to list your products since you can jockey for the best price until you get what you’re looking for.

Selling a Car for Parts Online Is a Good Option

When you’re aimed at selling a car for parts online, you’re going to get a lot more traffic than you would with a print ad. You need to make sure that you’re focused on the right market and that you’re asking for a price that is competitive with other offers.

If you’re looking to do a few repairs on this vehicle or your next one, check out our guide to DIY repairs for the average car owner.