Resto/Fair weather driver

[82ABNVET]

So I've started working on my '73 Cuda and I would like to find out some info regarding restoration. I'm not trying to do a rotisserie on it, but would like to make it look nice. I want to be able to drive it when the weathers nice and enter it into some local car shows. So my question is, as I'm going through it to make it mechanically sound I would like to clean and paint items on the car to look nice and as close to original as possible. Is there some kind of list that tells what color certain parts need to be? I'm referring to things like steering shaft, steering box, steering components, brake parts, brake booster, driveline, fuel tank, fuel lines, wiper motors, etc.

[82ABNVET]

No help? Is the best way to just look at pics and other cars???

[Chryco Psycho]

not sure if there is a list but it would be a god idea to start one
Brake booster & wiper motor were light gold but only the motor not the whole wiper motor assy
 fuel tank & lines were natural
steering box was natural if manual or blak for power
lots of different colors for steering & suspension & brakes

[anlauto]

A good rule of thumb is common sense. Think as if you were a car manufacture back in the day. You would not waste a lot of money "painting" parts. 99% of the parts you mentioned were never painted from the factory. They had several different types of plating on them for short term protection against corrosion, or in some case very thin coats of "dipped" paint, but in most cases just left bare to rust within days of being new.

Stuff like brake parts, steering parts were never painted, but if you want them to look clean and nice for displaying as you mentioned....then think smart......cast iron parts can be painted cast grey, steel parts can be painted steel colour, if the steering box has signs of black paint, then paint it black, and so on....

What looks totally bogus is when people clean up all their front suspension parts then paint everything with a new coat of satin black  Again...it was never done that way at the factory, so why now

[82ABNVET]

Good food for thought, thanks for the info. I don't like it when people paint everything black either. However it's a matter of personal preference I guess. If we all liked the same thing what a dull world it would be. Maybe I'll start a list, that's gonna be one heck of a list!