front suspension paint colors
 

What parts do you guys feel would be natural steel in color vs cast gray?
Thinking the springs would be natural, but what about the stabilizer bar, & steering components? Tie rod ends, center link, etc?

tie rods & centerlink are a darker forged steel.

Any opinions on the sway bar? Seems like they look like cast gray is some picts & natural steel in others.

In the GTOAA site, they list all of the parts as "natural finish" but no specifics to what the natural colors would actually be.

This car, looks like everything up front is the same "cast" type gray.

A little hard to tell though. the bar looks brighter than the steering pitman arm where your can just barely see it.

https://www.americanmusclecarmuseum....judge_2456.jpg

All of my cast parts are cast grey, my sway bar and brackets will be steel color.

my center link is actually a dark blue, resembles a blued gun barrell. I struggled with this because I thought it should be cast color. The guy thats helping me restore my car is also restoring a 68 gto that had all of the original suspension parts on the car and his centerlink was the blued color. So we paint both of them the bun barrell blue color.

I recall reading about the center link being a different color.
Or maybe another member posting about it a while back?

Parts like the center link and pitman arm go through a heat treat process so even though they are a natural appearance, they look different than the sway bar etc...

Here's a pic of the original unrestored center link from my 69 Z/28. May not be the best pic but you can clearly see it's not a typical cast appearance. Very difficult to duplicate this appearance with paint. What I've found works best is gun bluing dye found at places like Dicks. I use it when restoring a driveshaft to duplicate the blue metal created when welding the ends on.

Yes, we actually had a quart of paint mixed to match the color of the original. It looks very similar. I also used the blue paint to detail my drive shaft to simulate the welds. I also went over it with with a dark brown for the weld simulation.

Aahhhh, I wondered how guys were doing that with the welds. My driveshaft had a lot of small pits, so I filled them & painted it to "simulate" bare steel. Yup, looks like paint, but its clean & smooth anyway. ;)

Any picts of the blue'd welds? Just curious

I'm giving away my tricks :D

Takes practice to apply it, rub it in, giving it a fade away appearance etc... But works very well.

I have 100's of photo's. I'll have to search through and see if I can find one.