Me and my friends would also go around scrounging for used wheel weights but we used them to make fishing weights. We made what was called a "buddy burner" (coffee can with melted wax mixed in with a rolled up piece of cardboard.... it would burn forever!! We would get the wax out of dumpsters behind the milk bottling factories here in town.. some can remember milk cartons sealed with wax on the outside and inside. They would throw away the old used wax and we would use it in our buddy burners to melt the lead. Yes, the lead fumes were very bad for everyone but we didn't know any better. Maybe the lead fumes cancelled out the mercury poisoning??? Makes little difference now since I ended up joining the military and became a Nuclear Weapons Specialist. Ever heard of Plutonium 325 or tritium gas??
We used tons on carbon Tet and other now illegal cleaning fluids back in the 70s!!