Ok, I've cleaned the interior and exterior of the car and I would love to have it all nice and shiny under the hood. And I did try to polish the valve covers on one side just to see how bad they were. May be replacing those anyway with original look covers.

But, I've been doing some thinking about that and am thinking of just leaving it as is. I'm afraid if I clean it up then it will never look as vintage as it does and once I do that there is no going back. Does anyone else have an opinion on this? After all, I kind of like the couple of leaves stuck in the OAI mesh.

 

Not sure what your end goal is with this car. Survivor? Driver? Drive and restore. Ground up resto in the future?
If you have a survivor dont touch anything until you contact an OCA member for guidance. There are books out there outlining survivor do/donts. NCRS people are keenly aware of this.
If not interested in Survivor class then degrease the thing and clean it up. IMO nothing impresses the crowds more then attention to detail.

 

Well, I guess my end goal with the car is to drive it like it was driven back in the day. I'm not really a car show person, or a dog show person, or a show it off person. If someone here was in the Charlotte area and wanted to stop by and see it, I'd show it to them...but other than that...this car will never be at any show. It isn't perfect, nor do I want it to be. I kinda like those holes for the headers in the red fender liner.

To each their own I guess, and I respect those who have had WAY bigger projects then I have had on this car, (actually to even call it a project is probably a joke to some.) And I understand how much I would want to show off my hard work if I brought a car back from a junkyard to factory original shine and sparkle.

However, in my case...this is a car, a time machine, and a family heirloom. So my intent is to use it as it was previously used, but with respect for the history and hard work that went into this car. So that means no runs above 4000 RPM. HAHA.

By the way, the pics of your car are great...and that's how I would like mine if I were to buy one from anyone else...but this car, I don't think I could do that to. Maybe it sounds wrong, but that's where I'm at with it for now. Heck, I even felt a little bad using some cleaner on the spots of the car where there were ID codes/derivatives. But I know a necessary part of insurance is documenting what you have in case anything were to happen. So that was kind of unavoidable.

 

Ive had just two principles. If you restore outside, restore inside too ( incl. engine compartment).
If you restore inside, restore outside too.

Nothing catches eye like inside/outside being restored vs another not.

 

If you can get it running and driving as it is I would clean what is there the best you can and drive the wheels off of it. If I had to do it over with my W-30 I would have got it to reliable driving condition and did just that, Drive the wheels off of it.

I love the fact that you want to keep the history of the car alive. Early on with your car when I thought it was originally an automatic car I had mentioned that I would keep the 69 H/O transmission in it for that reason. If it were just any old TH400 I would have looked for an OW but not in your case. Now that we know it is a 4 speed, I would still get it running and driving as it is first then decide if you want to go back to 4 speed. All this is just my opinion. The biggest thing is to enjoy it but if you start cleaning under the hood it will lead to the might as wells...

 

Ok, sounds like you need to start by detailing it. Just remove dirt and clean it all up. See where you are then.

 

TX! Lots a hard work there. The 2 in the middle are mine. The right pic is a 426 Max Wedge Super Stock Cross Ram Chrysler, the far left is of course a 68 W30.