18 tips to ensure an organized restoration

By Carl Heideman
Oct 27, 2023 | Restoration, organization, Shop Work | Posted in Shop Work , Restoration & Renovation | From the July 2013 issue | Never miss an article

[Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the July 2013 issue of Classic Motorsports.]
Where they talk about Chinese junk....now in 2023, we talk about Communist Party Chinese junk.
Where the communist Party sells Chinese Junk below what they sell it in China as a way of taking the business away from American companies, until American companies go out of business....and then the sole supplier...Communist China can jack up the prices..........and eventually destroy the American economy....which pres Biden and the leftists don't understand...or have been paid bribes as "consulting fees"..........

Haven't we learned anything? ...........Besides our own democrat pres selling out America to get billionS in personal cash...

We’ve restored scores of cars and found that organization is a key component to success. Countless stories and books have been written about restoration organization. Most advise keeping lists, making sketches, and using plastic bags to keep parts organized in boxes.

While we can agree with all of that, we’ve found three innovations that border on making the previous methods obsolete: digital cameras, inexpensive plastic storage bins, and low-buck wire shelving.

No doubt all of these innovations are so ubiquitous and cheap thanks to our ever-increasing addiction to Chinese products. Nonetheless, we’ve found them indispensable and irresistible for our restorations these days.

We’ll get to a step by step very soon, but here’s an overview. While making sketches can still be important, we find that we can usually take digital pictures to replace the sketches, especially if they’re supplemented with a good service manual. However, digital photos help us probably even more by keeping track of all our parts in inventory. Photos pretty much eliminate the need to keep lists, and they certainly make it easy to find parts when necessary. Where do we keep those parts? In our low-dollar plastic storage bins on our wire shelving, thank you very much.

Because of our country’s obsession with cheap Chinese goods, it seems we have developed an even greater need for storing all the cheap Chinese goods we bring home from the big-box stores every week. Fortunately, Chinese manufacturers have come up with a great solution for us by providing cheap, attractive plastic storage bins and cheap, attractive wire shelving to keep the bins on. These bins and shelves are perfect for storing car parts. The bins come in just about every size you’d ever imagine. The shelves are sturdy, long-lasting and very easy to assemble. The result is that you should never have to use a cardboard box or homemade shelf again.

So here’s what we do: We sort all our parts into appropriate groups, like electrical parts, trim parts, engine parts and gearbox parts. Next, we put nearly every group of parts into an appropriately sized plastic bin. Then, we put every bin on our shelves. We usually buy shelves with wheels so we can roll them around when we need to. We label all of our bins, but more importantly, we lay out the contents of each bin and photograph them. That way, we’ve made an instant inventory of our parts.

We keep the digital photos nearby on a computer, but we also print them out and put them in a binder. The fastest way for us to find a part isn’t to search through the bins; instead, we quickly flip through the printed photos of the appropriate bins. Once we spot the part in our binder, we open the appropriate bin and put it to use.

This all sounds trivial, but we figure these methods save us 30 to 50 hours of searching for parts and dealing with other details over the course of a restoration. It also saves us cash because we don’t have to replace lost parts. What would you rather do: Look for parts, or work on your car? Follow along and we’ll show you how we stay organized.

Step 1

Does this look typical? While in this case we’re organizing a basket-case Mini we just bought—we’ve been guilty of this type of parts storage in the past. Parts are just crammed into old boxes, several of which are ready to fall apart. Many parts aren’t in boxes at all. The results are frustrating: Parts are hard to find, boxes disintegrate, and the workspace is pretty much a mess all the time.

Step 2