In my country, there is a second-hand trading platform where the LOGO is a cartoon small yellow croaker (I won’t mention the name, everyone knows it). Countless sellers will sell some strange things here. Of course, there are also many people on the platform. sell the car. These cars come in all kinds of conditions. There are so-called " mortgaged cars " that are as good as a new car at a very cheap price, and there are "boutique first-hand cars" that look like they have been weather-beaten but the owner is still unwilling to lower the price. There are also some old luxury cars like Mercedes-Benz W140 Tiger Head Ben, Jaguar 90s XJ-S, and they are all cheap.
Of course, all of the above are normal phenomena. After all, when you go to the physical second-hand car trading market, you will basically encounter this kind of car. But there are also some very strange cars on this type of online platform. Some of them look like big accident cars, maybe the sedan has changed into a convertible, or the whole front of the car may be completely broken. Or, you can still see some "cars" that have been burned into scrap iron. Without a certain level of recognition skills, you can't even tell at a glance what kind of car it is. Of course, they are all very cheap, the expensive ones are thousands of yuan, and the cheap ones are even less than a thousand yuan.
It stands to reason that these things should not appear in the second-hand trading market, and scrap yards or scrap metal recycling stations are the only places for them to go. But what's even more weird is that this kind of car is not only sold in the second-hand market openly, but also very popular! Almost as soon as the seller puts them on the shelves, they will be sold quickly.
We are very surprised, why are these scrapped cars that are not even worth repairing so popular? People who bought these cars back, what exactly are they planning?
In fact, the vast majority of people who buy cars with major accidents are not individual consumers like you and me. And a car actually has a lot of spare parts that are worth recycling, and quite a few of them are not cheap in the spare parts market. Especially the three-way catalytic converter , which is something that almost every car has.
The three-way catalytic converter is a kind of exhaust purification equipment, which is installed in the middle of the bottom of the vehicle. Its function is to purify the exhaust gas from the exhaust pipe so that these exhaust gases can meet the national emission standards. To put it bluntly, the three-way catalytic converter is somewhat similar to the filter element in our common water purifier.
The three-way catalytic converter is something that every car has, and it is also one of the most demanded, most popular and most expensive single parts in the market for dismantling parts. Why is demand high? There are many cars, especially those with a certain age. Once the exhaust gas fails to meet the standard during the annual inspection, the effect of repairing the engine itself is not as direct as replacing the three-way catalytic converter. Moreover, the reason why the three-way catalytic converter can purify the exhaust gas is achieved by the chemical reaction between the exhaust gas and the catalyst in the catalytic converter. And these high-grade gas catalysts made of rare metals and precious metals , and the carrier of the catalyst --- ultra-high temperature ceramic materials, are very, very valuable in the industrial product market.
So to put it bluntly, the three-way catalytic converter is a treasure. For some scrapped or burned cars with a complete three-way catalytic converter body, these car dismantling merchants usually dismantle the three-way catalytic converter and , and do some simple cleaning. Directly sell it at a high price to other peers who do car dismantling parts or a specialized company responsible for refurbishing the three-way catalyst. After these people or institutions buy second-hand catalytic converters, they will carry out further cleaning and refurbishment, and then sell them at a higher price (as for the sales channels, most of them are sold to auto repair shops).
Even if the casing of the three-way catalytic converter itself has been damaged, or the "fired area" of the returned burned car is too large and serious, the three-way catalytic converter itself has basically failed. These people also have a way. They will disassemble the catalytic converter and sell the catalytic structure that can still be used inside (the catalytic structure itself is ultra-high temperature ceramics, and generally will not be damaged by fire), even if it is a scrapThe three-way catalytic converter, as long as the catalytic structure inside is not completely damaged, can still be sold at a high price.
This also directly leads to a phenomenon: Some sellers of scrapped cars will remove the three-way catalyst before selling the car. In this way, the scrapped cars without the three-way catalyst are generally worthless, and there will be many fewer buyers. Most of those who buy back such scrapped cars without catalytic converters are just to see if the car is still functioning well and has spare parts that are worth repairing.
In fact, selling three-way catalytic converters has long been a common thing in the global auto repair circle. In the United States on the other side of the ocean, there are even a large number of people who have directly engaged in the act of stealing three-way catalysts. Specifically, a group of people directly remove the three-way catalytic converter of the car being repaired or normally parked in the car repair shop or even the car parked on the side of the road, taking advantage of no one in the middle of the night or various burglary methods. steal.
This matter has become so serious in the United States that the U.S. federal police needs to set up a special "combat team" to deal with these three-way catalytic converter thefts that are flooding the country. In Europe, where the immigration problem is serious, such things have recently begun to appear one after another. Moreover, unlike our country, the emission standards of Europe and the United States have very high requirements on the exhaust gas of diesel engines. In addition to the three-way catalytic converter, most European and American diesel vehicles will have additional exhaust purification equipment such as urea catalytic converters.
And all exhaust gas purification equipment needs to be attached to the same expensive ultra-high temperature ceramics or other composite materials through expensive catalysts to achieve gas purification. Moreover, as the global automobile emission standards become more and more stringent, these emission purification equipment will only become more and more valuable, and the probability of being targeted by criminals or gray production chains will only increase.
In fact, to put it bluntly, there will always be demand and market for the scrap parts industry. Whether it is a fuel car or a tram, it cannot be avoided. There are phenomena such as reselling three-way catalysts at high prices for fuel vehicles, and there is also the behavior of refurbishing battery packs for electric vehicles. These things can never be completely blocked. The final destination of these parts after being "bleached" by the gray production chain must be an auto repair shop.
Therefore, as consumers, we try our best to repair cars in 4S stores. If you think that local 4S is really expensive and unreliable, please try to choose to maintain vehicles in large national chain auto repair institutions. Compared with countless roadside stalls, etc., these large institutions are relatively more formal, and the probability of problems such as "reworked parts" will be much less.
