Each 3.5" computer disk - remember those, you are throwing them out aren't you?? - contains a spring very similar to the tyco pickup shoe spring. It is the one pulling the tab over the disk surface as you release the disk from the drive.

Didn't need one, didn't try it... but if you are missing one, try and let us know.

Not sure "plenty" is the word. I haven't seen those in years.

Most of mine are already lining landfills.

As a general rule, if you have any PC disk drives, optical or magnetic, that go bad it's always a good idea to dissect them for usable parts. The head positioners typically have both very small and very large neo magnets. I converted a handful of my JLTOs to Ultra-G equivalents using the small but powerful rectangular neos pulled from dead disk drives. Besides magnets there are also springs and tiny screws that may be just the thing for your Fray'd TJets. I pulled some phillips screws from a DVD drive that have heads that are flatter than anything I've ever found anywhere.

The big neos... I use these are parking pads for my traction magnets. No, they won't zap your ceramic magnets back to life but they will keep them at full tilt while thay are sitting around. Just make sure you always set them in place in with the magnet attracting one another. I also use these big neos also locate missing parts on the floor or around the track. I have also used them to magnetize screwdrivers when I had to reach through a hole too small for a hand to fit, for example, when hanging those 60 drawer parts drawers on a wall.

The other PC related recycling thing I found was the old plastic filler plates for 3.5" and 5.25" drive bays. I used these for billboards on my track. The better ones have horizontal mounting holes in the back where a screw would go through and attach behind the front of the PC case. I slid some fairly large nails through these holes, epoxied them, painted them black, attached slot car logos from packaging to the front, and polyurethaned the finished product. Since my layout uses Styrofoam based scenery the nails served as perfect mounting legs for the billboards. I put a little white glue on the legs before setting them and they are rock solid and recycled. Some of the filler plates were just flat, For the smaller ones (3.5") I epoxied roofing nails to the back of the plate and mounted them on the sides of rock faces. On other ones I used an L-bracket and mounted them flush to the ground. On the flush ones I covered the L-brackets with piles of stones, which were done after the pics I posted. See my pics for the finished and work in progress.

I'm not a pack rat, I'm a recycler.