How do you document your projects?
 

Since today is Blursday the Fortyteenth of Maprilay... hahaha... I have no idea what day it is anymore with this COVID-19 quarantine...

With all this copious time on my hands I’m wondering how everyone documents their projects? I’m thinking about teardown but could be other things as well like adding something to an electronic circuit so you’ll remember what you did later.

Scott (wareaglescott) has an impressive system for his teardown. Far better than my “eh, I’ll surely remember how that goes back together later” system. :D

I find that once I start working I’m usually so focused on what I’m doing that taking the time to stop and take pictures and notes is an annoyance. I commend those of you who have the discipline to document well.

So what are your tips and tricks to make it easier and less painful?

C’mon Pelican Braintrust! Show me what ya got!

When I disassembled a dashboard once (to replace a heater core), I laid out all the screws (as I took them out) in order on a sheet of scratch paper on my work bench. That worked surprisingly well, as I disassembled one day, and reassembled the next. I had no shop manual for that project. Just some Youtube video in Spanish to follow.

Pics with a cellphone. You always think you'll remember the orientation of wires/springs/doohickeys, but it's easy to get mixed up, particularly if you're doing both left and right sides. I stitch in time...

Pic's are a must with me. I also lay out parts on my work bench as they came off. I do this a lot.
I make notes on more complicated stuff. I do not use a manual. I figure if it came apart it can go back the same way....

Label wires and hoses with blue tape, take photos as I disassemble, get a bunch of baggies and sharpies and bag and tag everything. Zip tie subassemblies together, take a ton of photos during disassembly, and store hardware in those plastic carrying cases with lots of little compartments. I also like to clean stuff before I store it.

This way nothing gets lost, and when you try to remember how to put stuff back together you have labels and photos.

I have a dumb question. One reason I don’t take a lot of pics is because of the mess. If I wear gloves, the smartphone screen doesn’t recognize my finger touching it. Plus sometimes the gloves have grease or oil on them and them I’m wasting time taking them on and off so I don’t get it all over the phone.

I wish I had some kind of rig with a camera and a remote trigger.

Anybody ever done anything like that?

Like the ideas here. Keep ‘em coming.

Never thought about zip ties before. That’s a good idea!

If you say “hey Siri take photo” it will take you to camera screen .
From there you can either use a stylus or any part of your anatomy to hit the little white circle and take a photo .

I’ve been documenting most every project with photos from my iPhone. For my most recent suspension refresh I’ve been using Google photos to document the disassembly process. I’ve added comments to a shared album that I share with myself. I hope this makes it a bit easier in reassembly.

I’ve admired your avatar for some time Duder-sippin on a White Russian ....

My best mechanic/buddy uses yogurt containers to organize the small brackets, nuts washers, etc. I’ve tried this approach, but find it lacking in recall.
The best recommendation I’ve recently come across was home built Jeff’s compartmented plastic boxes. Iirc, he suggested using either a felt tip or sharpie to label the bins - just in case the project “runs long” and or having a senior moment.
I haven’t the discipline to clean the bits, as I blaze on disassembly, unlike the previous poster :-)
With the sheltering in place, I am really making progress on Dad’s 74, reviewing threads on the upcoming projects. I’ve recently started making notes, while reading: torque specs, tool specifics, cautionary tips and “as long as you are in there”, stuff, a particular weakness of mine, as I am easily distracted.
I no longer print and file threads of interest, but, I do bookmark noteworthy threads.
It helps immensely, having moved to a bigger place, with room to store parts on shelves/cabinets and being able to leave the car up on the lift.

Back to the documentation, I keep a note pad on the bench and a cell phone handy for photos and notes, like shooting a pic of the starter and engine wiring layout, before disassembly, or noting parts or operations that are needed, the list can get lengthy. It would help, if I were more diligent with the photos.
I’ve used electrical phase tape, (lots of colors), to tag wires, or, just used a fine point sharpie to number or letter disconnected wires.
Yeah, shooting pics with greasy gloves is off putting. Ditto, setting up lighting - but as has been said, a photo is.........
Looking forward to others thoughts.
chris

Lots of video so you can go back and watch all the areas you forgot to take pics of, ha ha.

This past week I rebuilt my steering rack and I couldn't remember how far the needle bearing was pressed in.

The video was clear enough to see that there needs to be room for the O ring to be recessed.

Cheers!

^^^ The Dude abides. :D

I have used sandwich bags and a sharpie. Same concept as the containers. It worked to some extent. I didn’t always get pics from the right angles. And I thought I’d have the PET to fall back on but sometimes those diagrams leave a lot to be desired.

Kinda surprised there isn’t some kind of app that would let you tag a picture or insert text or a note.

I’ve wondered about setting up an old camera on a stand with some kind of foot pedal trigger.

In a perfect world I’d like to organize notes. Like what part numbers I’ve come across that are superseded. Wrong torque values. Stuff like that. Or for things that I do frequently. Cheat sheets.

I usually have a few boxes of rubber gloves on hand. Those work fine with phone touch screens. I also typically use unlocked Android phones (with an SD card slot) that cost a couple hundred bucks tops. So if the phone gets an oily smudge here and there, I wipe it off when Im done and no harm done. If I drop it in a bucket of used oil...well in the words of Ivan Drago, "If he dies, he dies."

Ah yes, I forgot about this. I have a notebook with notes written in chronological order. Literally everything and anything worth remembering, including stuff the PO did wrong or places where I screwed up and lessons learned. This was a godsend for tuning CIS.

Many of the newer mechanics gloves feature touch screen comparable material on the tip of the index finger

I way over document,

List every step of disassembly I take so I can reverse build it.
Take pictures of every step.
Number each picture and make a corresponding note in the disassembly log which picture goes with that step.

Yesterday I rewired the plug inside my passenger side mirror. I took that apart about 19 months ago. Pulled out my notes and pics of which wire went in which spot. Works like a champ (almost) every time. I probably have about 800 pics of taking my car apart.

Notes
Those cheap plastic organizer bins from Harbor Freight
Pictures

...and still need to reference the manuals and forums. :)

I do the sandwich bags and sharpie. But when I sent everything out for re-plating I did this.
I grouped every thing together for different parts and then used pictures to regroup them for assembly. The parts came back all shuffled together in one box.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1585583568.jpg


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1585583624.jpg

I wouldn’t say you over-document. Maybe you lose some time of the front end but it makes up for it on the back end. I probably waste time trying to figure stuff out on re-assembly.

Would you mind posting an example of a pic and your notes? I think you did an amazing job.

Haven’t seen that before! thanks!

If you look around on Ebay or even ask some friends, most likely you can find an old digital camera for free or cheap. A real camera with a shutter button. It will get greasy, so wrap most of the camera in a plastic baggie ahead of time.

Keep it on a tripod and it is easy to turn them on, and take a photo. It is not art, or high fashion, just a documentation photo so almost any digital camera will work. And most have a real shutter button and a real on or off button so a gloved hand works fine.

I’ve got one or two older digital cameras that might work. A Google search turned up that foot pedal triggers are not uncommon. I’ll look into this a bit more and report back.

I also have an old iPad that I might be able to repurpose.

So it seems a lot of people use handwritten notes. Anyone else have a different system?

Tim, you know my work. I guess I have a photographic memory (and it helps that I turned wrenches for 20+ years) but I rarely, if ever document anything. Just been lucky I guess. lol.

Pics with iphone and sometimes video for views at different angles. Often l will print out the associated PET / katalog pages for the project, Ziplocs for removed / disassembled parts, sharpie to label the bags with the PET illustration & position number. For parts too big for ziplocs, i label with PET #s on masking tape unless the part is pretty obvious like a bumper.

Bankers boxes to hold the baggies, grouped by section. Write the section(s) on the boxes. For my top end rebuild i filled about 10 or 12 bankers boxes with baggies of labelled parts, nice thing is the boxes can stack vertically for efficient storage, or go up on my overhead shelving.

For parts orders, i keep an order worksheet for each year, with tabs for larger orders and a misc tab for various onesy-twosy orders, or for services, tools and supplies. Each tab has the order date, vendor, part number, PET illustration/position, qty, unit and extended price, conversion to $CAD, and comments (eg part numbers superseded). Each order tab also has rows for shipping cost, duty and tax. I copy each order to the summary page for the year.

When parts arrive, i copy the year’s summary page (or new updates) and append to a consolidated worksheet with all orders for all years. The consolidated version has 2 additional columns, for qty used and balance remaining. When i use a part i try to remember to update the qty used on this worksheet.

This is my master inventory list which makes it easy to see if I have a part in stock, and where to find it, as sometimes one part number is used in different places. Every couple of years i do a physical inventory to verify/correct the worksheet.

It also makes it easy to see the total $$ i have invested in maintenance over the years. My wife will never, EVER see this list.

When parts come in, if not used right away I label with the PET illustration/position, and they go in a ziploc with any other parts from the same katalog page, then into a bankers box for the katalog section, eg 100 for engine, 200 for intake & exhaust etc. For some reason i seem to have a lot of electrical parts, lights etc that i haven't had time to deal with so there’s 2 boxes of group 900.

One thing i want to get around to is adding metadata for which parts were used for specific projects, eg top end rebuild, suspension overhaul, panel respray etc so i can easily summarize the project cost.

Great question -- I have a method that works very well for me:

Before I start, I clean the shop work benches and cover them completely with brown masking paper (the medium weight stuff for painting). When I buy the roll I cut it down to the width of my benches, so it's just a matter of rolling it out and taping it down.

Now, as I disassemble, I put stuff on the paper and note WTF it is with a sharpie, right on the paper. Everything is laid out, everything goes back on when I'm done, or it's obvious.

Fast and reliable - maybe not so good for really long projects, but great for shorter ones.

Chuck.H
'89 M491 TurboLookTarga, 453k miles

Bag and tag for most small parts/assemblies. Bigger stuff is usually self explanatory to reassemble. Wires/hoses get tagged with a # on masking tape and their corresponding connection tagged with the same letter or number, making things fairly simple.
Some photos, especially for wire/hose routings.
My Bentley is full of notes and lots of pencil wiring diagrams for gages & switches since most do not have single connectors which would make things easy.
Records - spread sheet with parts, cost, mileage and date backed up with paper receipts in a file, Very handy for determining how long the damn window switches last, among other things. (Based on advice here years ago, the right column has never been totaled)

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good! :D

Really good idea to do that on disassembly! Easier to figure out if there are any questions about the PET diagram when you're taking it apart versus putting it back together.

Really like the idea of sorting stuff by PET category. I have a growing collection of parts and right now it's random stuff in random boxes.


Wow. Impressive.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/pray.gif

:D

Again, http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/pray.gif

That is a flipping awesome idea!!!

I like it. I have encountered problems though where I tag a bunch of wires and then the tags get ripped off in the process of moving stuff around. Happened to me when I was wiring in an ATO fuse block. Had two red wires on the back side of the panel that I got backwards and caused some pain getting everything wired back correctly.

Speaking of the Bentley, we've all seen people post about the errors in the Bentley. It would be great if there was an organized list of them someplace -- by page number for instance.

Lucky indeed. I used to be like this with all things mechanical at work and play. Literally photographic memory, sometimes over the span of months or years.

Unfortunately as I have gotten older, that has given way and I find myself having to document things a bit... :/

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1585846568.jpg