We all have different reasons to visit a junkyard. Sometimes, you just need a part for your daily driver, or maybe you are fixing a car for a friend, or maybe you are just looking around for nothing in particular.

I have made many visits to the Pick-A-Part in Los Angeles. Once, I had to find four wheels from a 1982 Datsun 200SX. It was the only wheel that had the bolt pattern for the Datsun 510 I was building. The search seemed to take forever. At the end of my search, I took the wheels, had their centers cut out and welded into 16 x 8 inch truck wheels. The modified wheels came out great, and I had the only set around. All the young cats said the wheels were old school, and they were. The reason I built the steel wheels was because no one made good looking wheels for my car, and there was no way I was going to pay a grand each for custom wheels. But, if it wasn't for Pick-A-Part, I don't think I could have found the parts to customize my wheels. Pick-A-Part or similar businesses provide places where you can look around, take your tape measure for measurements, and find engines and other parts needed for any project. The combinations are endless, and you never know what treasure(s) you may find.

Talk about a treasure, one day I was walking around Pick-A-Part looking at V6 engines for a Grand National Vega project that was floating around in my mind (Early Vega, with a turbocharged Buick V6 and 200R trans, black, of course!). Oh, this was just one of the dozens of combo’s that I come up with everyday, daring to be different!

There I was stumbling around just looking and measuring different things when I saw the leather bag. I noticed the bag before noticing the person holding it. It was all wrinkled and brown and opened on the top like a satchel. Then, I noticed the old man holding the bag under his arm. He looked to be in his 60's, wore glasses, and had a cigar in his mouth. I think it was the cigar that got me wondering. Who was the old cat, and what was he up too? He had on work clothes, dark blue pants and a light blue shirt. He looked like someone I had seen somewhere before, but I couldn't put my finger on who he was. He walked around with his bag and stopped at the open hood of a 1970's Alfa Romero Spider. He set his bag down and started pulling out tools, some of which I had never seen before, and set to work pulling the valve covers off the little twin cam Alfa motor. I started to get a little closer, and it came to me who the old man was. He was Ed Iskenderian, the Cam father!

Mr. Iskenderian owns a multi-million dollar business and there he was "relaxing" in the junkyard. I couldn't believe it. I had read some stories that he liked to hang out at junkyards, but I really didn't believe them, but there he was. I have used Isky parts, and quite a few professional and street racers still use his parts. His full race solid rollers, rev kits and valve train pieces are second to none! So, I walked over to where he was working and I said, "Excuse me, are you Mr. Iskiderian?" He looked up from what he was doing, and with his teeth clenched around his cigar said " Yes, how ya doing?" We talked for a few minutes, and when I was about to excuse myself, he said "I love these Imports. You can learn something from them, kid". I said "Okay, I will see you around". He started working at the Alfa motor, and I turned and walked away.

The moral to the story is... get out to the junkyard, you never know what treasures you may find or what treasure you might run into.

Racing is life.......everything else is just waiting.