Unpainted Bolts when Restoring?

[Wayne64]

My truck will diffidently not even come close to a restored truck. I did things my way for both longevity and because at my age I wanted my M37 a certain way. Besides it's children that gets the biggest kick out of the truck. A few examples; almost all bed box hardware S.S. HEX, Fiberglass top, one wire alternator, and all bolts will be painted. Now for a story on a WWII bike I restored in my anal days. It was a 1943 Indian 741 and I did it up so it looked like the factory crate was just opened. No insignia etc. as I had great reference info on the build. Every nut and bolt on that bike was black oxide. Which meant I would heat them up cherry red and drop them in oil. Think how quick they would rust in real military service.
Now for my opinion on the M37 bolts. If you build the truck and don't add any unit markings then maybe in judging the un-painted bolts may play a part with judging. With unit markings it has already been to a motor pool and from what I saw in the Army anything went as long as it went down the road. JMO

BTW, my M37B1 could be brought back to original as all sheet metal has no extra holes.

[w30bob]

John,

I hear what you're saying about replacement parts being green.......but let's discuss it a bit. Seems everyone talks about M's being serviced in motor pools as if the only motor pools were in the Army. I'd expect that the Air Force also had their own motor pools, that serviced the large number of M37's ordered from Dodge. If Dodge was receiving blue painted parts from it's suppliers for installation on the assembly line for the AF trucks then why would those suppliers only supply green parts to the Air Force as spares? I would think if company "X" was manufacturing both blue and green headlights (for example) then why couldn't they supply the government with both as spares? Especially if the Air force was shipped it's spare parts directly from Dodge (which I'm not sure they did). Obviously as time went on there were multiple vendors identified to supply the same spare parts, but ORD 9 doesn't seem to list many alternate venders. Most of the parts were listed as made by Chrysler Corp.

I really don't know how the Air Force and Army supply chains were related, or if they were separate. Maybe we can find a former AF motor pool guy and ask him what color the replacement parts were and if that changed as time went on.

Good discussion........thanks!!

regards,
bob

[k8icu]

I have to agree with what Wayne said. If you are buidling a truck to be a just rolled out the factory door then I think you leave bolts unpainted and with that no bumper markings, no TP or MPH markings, no Secure hood or antifreeze markings, I'm not even sure of stars and hood markings. But if you add any markings unit, TP, MPH etc then I think you paint the bolts. Because as was said even in the AF motorpools airmen snuffy needed things to do and at some point would have been given a can of blue paint and a brush and told paint all the bolts and don't come back in till it's done!

I wonder as collectors who decides (other than ourselves) what is a "factory" restoration and what is "motor pool" etc. ?

[MSeriesRebuild]

Maybe I can shed some light. The Strata Blue M37 pictured on page 1 of this thread appears to be one that we built for Steve Simon I believe. We use all plated bolts, nuts, and hardware when we build up a truck. The reason is simple. When bolts are painted, the paint will be destroyed as they are wrenched into place, a no brainer as to how that would look on a high end restoration. The original bolts in a M37 are not plated and will readily rust as a result. That is why we don't reuse original bolts except upon customer request. When we do build a truck reusing original hardware, it is quite costly to clean and plate the originals adding a significant extra cost to the build. It's absolutely customer preference though.

I realize this doesn't answer the original question about painted or unpainted hardware; but it does explain fully the unpainted bolts in the truck that was pictured as an example.