The most important aspects to accomplishing a project of this scale is PLANNING, DOCUMENTATION, and ORGANIZATION! I cannot stress this enough. It has truly saved my butt a few times so far. I knew in the beginning that if I did not have a game plan, I would never get this thing back together without problems.

The first step is PLANNING, writing out ideas on paper. Put down everything you would like to do on your project. Go as wild as you want, write down everything that comes to mind. Say you are half way into your project and you realized you wanted to put in a locker but you already paid someone to set up your new gears. You are either not going to get that locker or you are going to pay to have them setup again. Once you have all your ideas on paper, then you can make your final decisions on what you can afford, and what is feasible.

Probably the most important of the three steps is DOCUMENTATION. When I was a kid, I had a bad habit of taking things apart and never getting them back together again. Well I was determined to not let that happen on this project. I decided to keep a notebook to document the disassembly process. Starting with the very first part, I kept a record of each part and any special notes about that part. When I remove a part, I first look it over, if it is damaged or needs something new, I would write it down. The other half of documentation is taking pictures. I took hundreds of pictures during the tear down process so that I could refer back to them when I put it back together. Those pictures saved my butt many times. There are so many small parts that go on a certain way that without pictures it would have been a major headache.

As you remove parts from your vehicle you need to have some sort of ORGANIZATION. I bought three different sizes of freezer bags with the area you can write on. When I removed a part, I would put all the hardware from that part into a freezer bag and label it for what it went to. If the part was small enough, I would put it in the bag with the hardware. I have a big Rubbermaid bin where I keep all of the small parts bags, and a 5 shelf rack to keep all the big, heavy parts. All the glass, bumpers, fenders, etc. went up into the attic so they would be out of the way. On the wiring harnesses, where there was a connection I put the tape on both sides and gave that connection a number. When I put the harnesses back on, all I have to do then is match up the numbers, saving me major headaches.

Follow these three simple steps for your project and you will save yourself so much time and effort. It does not take a lot of time to do these things and it will pay off in the end.