Auto services are generally considered “essential” to the operation of American society, so as of mid-May, many junkyards are still open during the coronavirus pandemic. Used-part yards are essential to those of us maintaining cars on a lean budget, so if you plan to go, here are some things to expect.

I’m lucky to live near quite a few yonkes where I’m at in Los Angeles. I often hit the LKQ yards in Wilmington, Anaheim, and Sun Valley. Sun Valley is also home to many specialist dismantlers that can be good sources of rare parts. But since LKQ is a national chain, I visited one of its locations in hopes that recon I did would be applicable to more of you.

OK, fine, the real reason I went to an LKQ was because I saw an ’86 300ZX on the chain’s Monrovia location website and wanted to see if it had any bits I could use for the restoration of my Z31.

So here’s what I saw:

SoCal junkyards are usually somewhat busy on a sunny Saturday, this run, the parking lot was nearly empty. It’s common to see food trucks, people selling tools, or non-employees hanging out that are willing to help you pull parts for cash. Don’t count on that unofficial infrastructure if you go to the yard right now, I didn’t see them.The LKQ I went to did have quite a few signs about staying six feet apart at the only two bottlenecks for people you ever see in boneyards: The entrance line and the checkout line. All the uniformed yard employees I saw were wearing gloves and masks. I barely saw anyone else shopping the yard while I was there, but of the people I did see, masks and gloves were only on about half of them. At least it’s easy to social-distance in a yard, especially when it’s not crowded.

If you’ve scrolled this far down, I assume you are working on a car restoration to maintain some semblance of sanity, or you’re just trying to keep something on the road for as little money as possible. That being the case, here are some tips for pandemic safety you might want to think about as you rock up.

If you wear safety glasses and a headband flashlight while you work on cars (you should, they’re helpful!), put them on before you glove-up and enter the yard. That will keep you from touching your face. Extracting yard parts can be laborious; make sure your PPE isn’t going to fall off when you’re heave-ho’ing. If you have to touch it with your dirty gloves, it becomes pointless. You never know who the last person to touch the car you’re harvesting was. I changed gloves before handling my camera to take these pictures, and would recommend you do the same. Running some degreaser wipes over your new/used parts, and any tools you used, should help cleanliness somewhat.

So in summary: Junkyard protocol is pretty much the same as it is in a grocery store. Stay away from people, be careful about what you touch.

As for my shopping trip, the Z I went to harvest was missing the stuff I wanted, and it was a 2+2 anyway so many of its parts wouldn’t have fit my two-seater anyway. Hopefully your long weekend was productive in whatever automotive projects are/were on your list.