What Can a Salvage Yard Legally Sell, and What Should It Not?

Airbags and restraint components

This is the one that matters most, so here is the reasoning in full.

• Performance standards. Federal rules require a replacement airbag to meet the same performance
  standard as the original: deployment timing, inflation pressure, tear strength, behavior across a wide temperature
  range. A used airbag cannot be tested against any of that without destroying it, and it cannot be recertified.
• State law. Several states prohibit the installation of salvaged airbag systems outright,
  regardless of why the unit was removed.
• Shipping. An undeployed module contains a pyrotechnic initiator. It is regulated hazardous goods,
  and shipping one without declaring it is a federal offence.
• The counterfeit problem. The used airbag market has a long history of counterfeit and improperly
  recovered modules. There is no way for a buyer to tell.

The same reasoning applies to seatbelts, pretensioners and clock springs. They are all part of the
same restraint system, and a pretensioner is itself a pyrotechnic device.

Recalled parts

A part subject to an open safety recall should not be resold, and a yard with any standards will pull it. The
difficulty is that recall status is not always obvious on a loose component, which is a reason to buy from somewhere
that keeps records rather than somewhere that does not.

Emissions equipment

Anything that removes, bypasses or defeats emissions control equipment is prohibited under the Clean Air Act.
That covers delete kits and defeat tunes. It is illegal to sell them and illegal to fit them to a road vehicle,
whatever the marketing says about off-road use only.

Catalytic converters

Legal to sell used in principle, but heavily regulated because of theft. Many states require documented
provenance and some prohibit the resale of used converters entirely. A yard offering one with no paperwork is worth
walking away from.

What we refuse

We do not list, stock or sell:

• Airbags and airbag modules
• Seatbelts, pretensioners and clock springs
• Any other supplemental restraint component
• Parts subject to an open safety recall
• Emissions defeat devices of any kind

Where we sell a seat assembly, it is supplied without supplemental restraint components. Any
module or pretensioner is removed and is not included.

Plenty of yards will sell you these things. That a seller is willing to is a reasonable signal about their
standards generally, and worth weighing before you buy anything else from them.