Keep it for sure. Why does it "NEED" to be restored? If it's just because the body is falling off, then it's probably still useable as is for now, while you save up for the big "restoration". Put $50 bucks a month in a coffee can, and in ten years you'll have a nice stash of monies to start the restoration. Till then, wheel it as is in simpleton form.
I've seen this happen too many times, where it's decided something "just can't be used as it is" because it's not nice enough. Then it sits forever, waiting for the stars to align, or lottery be won. The reality is that it doesn't HAVE to be a show winner to be fun. It doesn't HAVE to have a lift, engine rebuild, or disk brake conversion to be cool. It just needs to run to be fun.
If the body is rusted beyond repair, then a body replacement will be needed eventually to be "fixed" or restored. If it's being replaced completely, then why worry about the body on it now? Let the body keep falling apart and put a few dollars into the drivetrain to make it work for now.
If you "keep it going" now, it's harder to lose focus on the end goal of restoration, and even more memories will be made.
You won't hurt the frame, leaf springs, axles, transmission, or transfer case as it is. If the motor doesn't run now or comes apart sometime, you can always stick another used engine in it.
Story time!
I have a scout that was given to a friend and I when we were about sixteen. It had no centimental value whatsoever, and my friends old man thought we were nuts, but worked on it with us anyways, despite continually saying we were nuts to do anything but haul it in for scrap. It was rusted terribly. We got a 4x6 jammed between the door post and the trans tunnel, on top of the frame/body mount to hold the drivers side of the body up. We could actually crawl through the hole in the floor, and the rocker didn't actually exist. The 4x6 worked great, because when we put down a piece of 3/4" plywood to make a floor, we were able to nail it right down! We welded the doors and the tailgate shut stuck some sort of round fuel tank in the back with a new line to the pump, and headed out wheeling. Shortly after we took the hardtop off, and pounded the rusty fenders out to fit some 33" Armstrong TruTracs with busted cords on it.
We ran it like that for nearly ten years, two tracking, hill climbing, mud bogging, and whatever. I used to take my nephews out riding around in it, "mushroom hunting", or looking for squirrels, to go fishing, or whatever. It's been broke for many years now, the spider gears in the rear end stripped out while doing reverse donuts at a mud bog, and I've never gotten around to welding them up, and I certainly don't need it. They've moved further away now, and rarely get up here, but they still love telling their stories of the Scout to anyone who will listen. How they had to climb in because the doors don't work, "like a race car", how they thought it was on fire when the radiator hose came off, the hood opens up backwards, and all the seats were mismatched.
We've got our own stories of it. How the whole exhaust could glow red hot at night if we beat on it hard enough, a tire once spun itself all the way off the outside bead, then went back on while driving, the doors bouncing open and closed like wings when bonzaiing up a hill (why they got welded shut!), giving girls rides at mudbogs, how it was a recovery machine, towing home all the "good rigs" time after time.
Of course, none of those memories should have ever happened, because it wasn't worth using it as is, and "needed" a restoration to be useable. It is and since we got it has always been a giant pile of shit, but theres a dozen people who love it, just because of it.
I haven't started it in five or ten years and it's probably seized. It should have been scrapped when we got it, and it should be scrapped now. I'm not going to though. Someday some teenaged relative is going to want to ride in it, or fix it, or whatever, and we'll pour some atf down the cylinders, work it loose, weld up the rear end and go wheeling, creating a new story in itself.
The same time we scored ours for free, another school mate bought a nice one with a fiberglass body. He soon pulled out the strait six to put in a Caddy engine, and it has never run again. Who knows if he's still got it or sold it off, but I know for sure that we had more fun in our free POS that wasn't worth dicking with.