The destroyed engines (with the ceramic goo) generally *are* melted down for the scrap iron; the ceramic would float to the top of the melt and be skimmed off as part of the normal iron-making process. Scrap iron isn't worth much these days, with industrial activity being so low.
There isn't much of a market for a old vehicle engine as anything other than as a replacement engine for a similar vehicle. If you have an old engine from a 1985 Ford Bronco, about the only way to make money with it is to put it in another mid-80's Ford Bronco (or possibly some other Ford truck of the same era that used the same engine) whose origional engine has failed.
Turning them into tractor engines is a neat idea, but it would not really work. Trying to rebuild an old auto engine for another purpose is going to take almost as much energy and effort as building a new one, particularly given that nobody knows in advance what the old engines will be, and it probably will be less efficient than a new one designed for whatever it is you want the engine for (And you can always use the melted scrap as the raw materials for the new one). Amateur gearheads will do things with old engines (mainly put them in cheap race cars) but that's an insignificant market.
The whole "cash-for-clunkers" thing has two main goals: reduce emissions by getting older vehicles off the road, and to increase employment as new cars need to be built to replace the junked old ones. Both goals are circumvented if the old engines are used to repair a similar car; you might as well have kept the original one around. The goals are partially circumvented because the old cars are not completely destroyed, but that was part of the political trade-offs made to allow the program to exist.
Feel free to agree or disagree with those goals or how suitable 'cash-for-clunkers' is at accomplishing them; that's politics. I'm not talking politics, my field is engineering and mechanics.
no subject
There isn't much of a market for a old vehicle engine as anything other than as a replacement engine for a similar vehicle. If you have an old engine from a 1985 Ford Bronco, about the only way to make money with it is to put it in another mid-80's Ford Bronco (or possibly some other Ford truck of the same era that used the same engine) whose origional engine has failed.
Turning them into tractor engines is a neat idea, but it would not really work. Trying to rebuild an old auto engine for another purpose is going to take almost as much energy and effort as building a new one, particularly given that nobody knows in advance what the old engines will be, and it probably will be less efficient than a new one designed for whatever it is you want the engine for (And you can always use the melted scrap as the raw materials for the new one). Amateur gearheads will do things with old engines (mainly put them in cheap race cars) but that's an insignificant market.
The whole "cash-for-clunkers" thing has two main goals: reduce emissions by getting older vehicles off the road, and to increase employment as new cars need to be built to replace the junked old ones. Both goals are circumvented if the old engines are used to repair a similar car; you might as well have kept the original one around. The goals are partially circumvented because the old cars are not completely destroyed, but that was part of the political trade-offs made to allow the program to exist.
Feel free to agree or disagree with those goals or how suitable 'cash-for-clunkers' is at accomplishing them; that's politics. I'm not talking politics, my field is engineering and mechanics.