Almost any book about engine rebuilding says, over and over again, "Tag your hoses and lines, and take pictures!" It's good advice. No one wants to forget how things go back together and end up with a pile of extra nuts and bolts.
A 28-year-old Triumph enthusiast from the U.K. took his reference photos a step further. Here's how he describes it:
Started out as just a collection of snaps as I stripped down an engine bought off ebay. (To replace my old engine, which had suffered catastrophic failure). The snaps were so that I remembered how everything went, so I could put it back together again.
Then I realised it'd be quite cool to make it an animation. found some suitable music, rekindled my ancient knowledge of Premiere, storyboarded it, shot it as I worked on the engine (my poor DSLR got covered in engine oil), this [video] was the result.
Using thousands of pictures to document an 11-month rebuild, the whole process is animated and set to "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" from Edvard Griegs "Peer Gynt Suite." It's brilliant.
Of course, even though he took all of those photos for reference, he still ended up with six extra nuts, bolts and washers. But in the animation, they just slithered away, like all good leftovers should do. (Hat tip to goodoldluck/reddit!)