Parts Organization & Storage

[Panici]

For the parts hoarders out there, I'm interested to hear about your "system" of parts storage & organization.

Between all of my ongoing projects and past parts cars, I have accumulated a decent amount of items.
Just my '87 BMW E30 alone has had multiple iterations of drivetrain.

Thought I had a mental idea of everything until I discovered a driveshaft which I couldn't immediately ID, and then again later found a working sunroof motor from a parts car (dismantled in 2016 to be fair) after I had purchased a used one on a forum.

The majority of the parts are on shelving in the unfinished basement, but I also have some in the shed attic and garage attic.

I've started tagging larger items like driveshafts, transmissions, differentials.


Thinking it would be worthwhile to go through each area and make a excel spreadsheet of parts based on chassis, condition, origin, and intended usage.
I could label shelves as well to add some granularity.

I think the intended usage category would be especially useful in keeping track of brand new bits for future planned projects.
Having a better idea of "good" used spares would also be beneficial for my motorcycle ('03 Yamaha R6), in deciding what to bring with me on a track weekend.

Another example: I have a bodykit (purchased two years ago) and spoiler (purchased recently) for my '86 BMW E28, and I'm at minimum another two years out from mounting those parts onto the car. And add that to the majority of the E28 interior strewn across the basement until I make the sheetmetal repairs to the floor.

 

[LeeG]

Start with something basic. Take a photo of stuff with your phone, and put the photo in a folder dedicated to shop stuff.
From that you can make an excel spreadsheet, or something more involved. Start with the photos. If you can't keep up with that, then you aren't going to use anything that is more involved.

Lee

 

[kbuhagiar]

For the parts hoarders out there, I'm interested to hear about your "system" of parts storage & organization.

I've started tagging larger items like driveshafts, transmissions, differentials.


Thinking it would be worthwhile to go through each area and make a excel spreadsheet of parts based on chassis, condition, origin, and intended usage.

Nope.

Always remember that your time has value; subsequently, consider if the time and effort required to do a spreadsheet (or any other organizational task). Is the effort worth the reward?

Tagging any un-boxed or unlabeled parts is a good idea to reference the application, this information will be helpful when it's time to dispose of the part. The older you are, the more important it is.

I've just gone through this, as we just sold two residences and are combining all of our possessions into one household. I realized that I will never need any of the spare parts I have held on to for my cars (see my sig). Unless you plan on restoring a car to original, or have original parts that need to stay with the car, most take-offs can be discarded (through sales or donations).

Of course, YMMV.

Good luck!

 

[ycgoat]

I keep all stuff for a specific project or car together and try to use plastic totes marked with either contents or the type of contents

 

[Skellyii]

Nope.

Always remember that your time has value; subsequently, consider if the time and effort required to do a spreadsheet (or any other organizational task). Is the effort worth the reward?

Tagging any un-boxed or unlabeled parts is a good idea to reference the application, this information will be helpful when it's time to dispose of the part. The older you are, the more important it is.

I've just gone through this, as we just sold two residences and are combining all of our possessions into one household. I realized that I will never need any of the spare parts I have held on to for my cars (see my sig). Unless you plan on restoring a car to original, or have original parts that need to stay with the car, most take-offs can be discarded (through sales or donations).

Of course, YMMV.

Good luck!

@kbuhagiar , I feel ya. My girlfriend and I are in the process of doing the same thing. Haven't started working on dumping most of the car parts yet, but the donation folks at various places know us on sight.

BTW: Got any pictures of that Thunderbird? The early birds are one of my fantasy cars, and I plan on doing a resto mod after we get our living situation/garage stuff cleaned up.

 

[Rst277]

For the parts hoarders out there, I'm interested to hear about your "system" of parts storage & organization.

Between all of my ongoing projects and past parts cars, I have accumulated a decent amount of items.
Just my '87 BMW E30 alone has had multiple iterations of drivetrain.

Thought I had a mental idea of everything until I discovered a driveshaft which I couldn't immediately ID, and then again later found a working sunroof motor from a parts car (dismantled in 2016 to be fair) after I had purchased a used one on a forum.

The majority of the parts are on shelving in the unfinished basement, but I also have some in the shed attic and garage attic.

I've started tagging larger items like driveshafts, transmissions, differentials.


Thinking it would be worthwhile to go through each area and make a excel spreadsheet of parts based on chassis, condition, origin, and intended usage.
I could label shelves as well to add some granularity.

I think the intended usage category would be especially useful in keeping track of brand new bits for future planned projects.
Having a better idea of "good" used spares would also be beneficial for my motorcycle ('03 Yamaha R6), in deciding what to bring with me on a track weekend.

Another example: I have a bodykit (purchased two years ago) and spoiler (purchased recently) for my '86 BMW E28, and I'm at minimum another two years out from mounting those parts onto the car. And add that to the majority of the E28 interior strewn across the basement until I make the sheetmetal repairs to the floor.

The best thing to do is get rid of the stuff you will not use. There are way too many folks that hold on to stuff "optimistically" because they will "need" it one day. Then you have to organize it, store it or climb over the stuff to do what you enjoy.

 

[kbuhagiar]

@kbuhagiar , I feel ya. My girlfriend and I are in the process of doing the same thing. Haven't started working on dumping most of the car parts yet, but the donation folks at various places know us on sight.

BTW: Got any pictures of that Thunderbird? The early birds are one of my fantasy cars, and I plan on doing a resto mod after we get our living situation/garage stuff cleaned up.

Here ya go...

 

[e015475]

A few years ago, I had three restoration projects going at once and a lot of parts floating around. To organize it I bought some uniform-sized boxes from a company in Phoenix that sold used boxes - they were very heavy-duty- I think I spent around $20-30

I printed pages from online catalogs and taped them to the boxes. These were from Moss Motors, who have very nice bubble-style catalogs. I highlighted the bubbles of the parts that were in the box. Where I had multiples, I noted that too.

I try to only work on one project at a time, so I stored all the other project car parts in the basement - they stacked neatly against the wall and with heavy duty boxes I could stack them about 4 tall.

For parts for the car I was currently working on, I bought a 72" tall, six foot wide metal shelf unit off of Craigslist to store parts in the garage

For parts too big to go in the boxes, I went to Staples and bought some tags that I could attach to them with twisted wire and noted details on the tag. For the most part I stored them in the basement too (walkout)

All three of these project restorations were someone else's stalled effort and came with a lot of duplicate or irrelevant parts, I spent a lot of time picking through them and selecting the best ones to keep and selling the rest on ebay. For two of the three projects, the sale of excess parts netted me about 30-40% back on my project purchase price.

Hope this helps you some.

 

[Panici]

Nope.

Always remember that your time has value; subsequently, consider if the time and effort required to do a spreadsheet (or any other organizational task). Is the effort worth the reward?

That is a valid point. I've decided to work on the spreadsheet a little each night after dinner.
This is time I would otherwise waste watching TV, so to me it's more valuable to catalog my parts then consume some media.

Two nights in so far and it's been enjoyable going through the parts. Or at very least it hasn't been unpleasant. Hopefully I can keep the momentium.

----------------

Interesting point about purging what I realistically won't need.
But I keep coming back to the idea of picking up a second vehicle of the same chassis.
Heck if I have enough spare parts I could recondition it at little cost.

Think I will hold onto the parts until I either need the space or have to move.

 

[e015475]

PS My first impulse was to log everything on a spreadsheet too. Big time ****. I did, however, use the bubble parts list to make spreadsheets of parts I was missing and needed to order. That was helpful

 

[Skellyii]

I use a word processing program to create the labels, I save the files so that I have a record of what I have.

Here ya go...

Beautiful car! Thanks for posting the pics!