Hello all,

I crashed the 1990 240DL I had been lovingly maintaining for the last 4 years or so with this forum's gracious help.
It only took 3 seconds and a wet road to send it all crumpling into a wrecked mess.
Amazingly, it still runs and there's no frame damage, but I couldn't get it repaired before I needed a vehicle to get to work. Lo and behold, the next day I found another 240DL same year, different color, for a very reasonable price, and in better shape than the old one even after all the work I had done. So now our plan is not to repair the old one, but to use it as a "parts car" for the new one, because the old one has so many parts replaced.

SO...
How do I go about this? We don't have a garage or covered area to keep it, and I want to protect it as much as possible. We have tarps on it now to keep water from seeping in, but I still worry. My wife wants to simply strip it for all the new parts we put on and any others we may need and send the shell to the recyclers. Is this even practical? We'd take off the wheels, calipers, and rotors because they're less than 2 years old, so I assume we'll have it up on blocks or jackstands or something and I assume any vehicle recyclers would have a way to get it on a flatbed without the wheels, right? I initially had the notion that if we simply swap parts between the two, then eventually I could replace the front bits and quarter panel that were damaged, and be able to sell it as a "rebuild project" down the line. And the engine; if we go with my wife's plan, we'll have to remove and store the engine too, right?
For those of you who keep a "parts car", what are my best options?

 

IF you have the space, best is to just keep it as it is taking what you need as you need it. If want to strip it and store the parts, that's more labor and still, space to keep the stuff. If you plan do rebuild it in the future, then keep it and run it now and then.