Daz89

Hi everyone,
just a quick one regarding vehicle restoration and projects, my question is an agree/disagree on the subject of "properly keeping track of a vehicle project or restoration is too time intensive or complicated"
By 'keeping track' I mean collating the information to be useful later (reassembly, re-ordering parts, remembering what has been done / is left to do etc.)

also if you have any insights into why you agree/disagree please feel free to say, but ultimately i'm keen to know if people find this a problem.

Thanks,
Daz

BMWhere?

I can't speak from a vehicle restoration point of view, but generally speaking, when working on something complicated, its good to keep a track of what goes where when you're disassembling so that you can reassemble correctly and more quickly - you never want to end up with that one left over screw scenario!

The real question you need to ask yourself is why you are documenting the restoration and therefore how much effort and detail you want to put into it?

For example, if you only want to make sure you reassemble everything correctly, then you you would probably make minimal notes and make sure you keep things well organised while your working. If you want something afterwards for nostalgic purposes to look back at what you did, then you may want to create a photo book or an online blog (which may help others), in which case you would probably want to invest more time compiling the information and documenting what you've done.

Also, keeping a to-do list can help with the planning of any project. Make a comprehensive list before you start and add to it as soon as you realise other jobs that need to be done. It may ultimately save you a lot of time if you can plan to do related jobs together rather than having to re-work in certain areas. For example, doing everything you need to do while the engine is out rather than putting the engine back in and taking it out again or working with limited access because you forgot something. Lack of advanced planning is the biggest reason for delays in any project, be it car restoration, building a house or developing software! Spend a little more time upfront planning everything and you can easily recover the time down the line! Fail to do the planning and the jobs will snowball and cause delays due to rework. Obviously with something like a vehicle restoration project, you may need to first disassemble everything in order to work out what needs to be done, so strip down, plan, rebuild!

Daz89

Thanks for the response,
I'm a believer in the more records kept the easier/more successful the restoration or project generally. but from personal experience i find that the breadth of things i like to record make it an intimidating task that requires several forms of media to keep track of. I was just trying to see if others felt that it is a daunting or time consuming task that takes a little too much time away from the 'hands on' element of restoring the car, or that they stop short of recording every aspect due to the effort involved?

BMWhere?

If you don't keep track of anything, you will spend more time figuring out how to put things back together than you would have spent recording it in the first place, so its a no brainer really. If you're doing it purely from a workflow point of view, the trick is to optimise the amount of info you record and how you organise it.

Daz89

Would you say it's easy to optimise? or do you make compromises here and there?

BMWhere?

In the end, its what works best for you, so only really you can decide where to optimise the information you collect and that decision generally comes from experience.

If you're collating data on a computer (photos, videos, text documents) then think about your file naming and a suitable directory structure that can help you quickly locate the info you need, so avoid bunging everything in the same directory with img0001, img0002 etc. That way you can save creating an overall description document to collate everything.