Whats with the shortage of K11's in yards?

k11TZZ

k11TZZ

I went shopping today at the local breakers yard to get a couple of minor things - prefacelift rear lights and early facelift grill. Now, the yard I went to is a big one, Bridges in Crawley, and in the past ive always come away with what I wanted, and last year I went down there and there were all sorts of Micras all over the place, today there were a handfull of prefacelifts most of which had been butchered for parts, and 1 facelift, with no face, and not alot else. I got my rear lights but failed with the grill, so, determined to get the grill, i headed to another reasonable sized yard which had only 1 Micra, fortunatly with the grill I wanted, and it was the same colour as mine but the car looked like it had been picked up by a grabber and thrown.

All in all I got what I wanted and a nice drive down the lanes, but whats with the shortage of micras in yards? Is everyone repairing them rather than getting rid? Is it a nationwide trend? Or was it just sods law that I picked a day to go shopping when there was nothing to shop from?
 
age matey, no point keeping a car in a yard, costing money in space, when you may sell a handfull of parts off it over a 12 month. Plus the cost of repairing an old micra is normally not cost effective unless you can do the work yourself. so most people dont bother. The yard i work in, we dont keep anything over a certain age in the yard, it gets stripped of popular parts for the shelf and then its shipped out to the steel works straight away. you would be supprised how many micras get killed off every day, give it a few years and the mk1 k11 will deffo be classic status
 
hoopdub said:
age matey, no point keeping a car in a yard, costing money in space, when you may sell a handfull of parts off it over a 12 month. Plus the cost of repairing an old micra is normally not cost effective unless you can do the work yourself. so most people dont bother. The yard i work in, we dont keep anything over a certain age in the yard, it gets stripped of popular parts for the shelf and then its shipped out to the steel works straight away. you would be supprised how many micras get killed off every day, give it a few years and the mk1 k11 will deffo be classic status
Click to expand...

hoop! how often do you come across centre caps at your place?
 
Srappage scheme... so many wasted working or fixable cars...
conspicuous-consumption-i-shop-therefore-i-am.jpg

And now we dare giving "lessons" to developping countries about ecology... A lot of countries where we send our dumps and where they DO fix things instead of stupidly buying and buying...
 
Cheers hoopdub I was kind of thinking along those lines myself. Ive always done work to my own cars, more often than not getting bits from scrappers, it makes sence that its more cost effective to get a car in the yard and crush it for the money straight away, but that doesnt really help owners of cars of a certain age, especialy when people are trying to find the most cost effective way of getting around what with the economy and stuff. I guess cars are going in and out all the time but its more a case of getting lucky rather than expecting it to be there. As for the Mk1 k11 acheving classic status, personaly I think it already has, and to a certain extent the facelift has too, its a car thats simply damn good at doing what it does, and has the same sort of universal appeal as a Mini (the proper one), just on a smaller scale. It appeals to old ladies for shopping, but at the other end of the scale its got huge potential for tuning. Just like a Mini.
 
I was looking for k11 parts this weekend and only found one place near me that had them. Had about 6-7 K11s all.pre facelift. Only wanted some wheels
 
loads of k11s in scrappys in my area. found all sorts over the years, fogs, wind deflectors, oem arch covers, si's and sports+'s.
 
It's sad how wasteful we are.I'm constantly shocked at the amount of decent cars that are scrapped before their time.
Thousands of K11's are crushed complete because they have corrosion in rear sills or front crossmember.
This is likely to be regretted in the future when modern cars go wrong so often due to complex electronics,and when you open up your new Nissan bonnet to find a Renault engine.
The authorities are hypocrites,telling us how we must recycle but make it hard for the exporters to get cars in and out of countries.
If I had the space I'd keep a Super S,disappearing fast..Future classic.
 
Hoopdub and Seb nailed it... Scrappage scheme killed a lot of great cars, worst part was that they were simply crushed and recycled instead of being broken down for spares and having the shells binned...

And obviously, eBay aswell. Local scrappies around here know their stuff and don't just let parts go for a few quid anymore. Expensive stuff like lights, clocks, sports trims tend to get taken by the scrappies themselves and flogged online for quadruple the price.

A good example is that you will always find old shape Renault Lagunas, but they will NEVER have the much sought after splitters still attatched. They get taken off right away and sold on the net.
 
I went to Bridges about a month ago and there were quite a few K11's but nothing special. I've come across March K11's, Super S's and other gems in there before but recently they were all crappy ones with nothing to offer. I did find a full set of Bilstein springs & shocks on a Corsa B though, but didn't have the tools to take them off!
 

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