just aquired a 68, got a few Questions.
 

i'll start off by saying i'm completly new to these car's and know very little about them. This car was actually my g/f's first car and has had it since she was 16, it's been stored at her parent's in california for 2 years now, so it's new to me :D

anyhow, first question. the car has power steering, but leaks almost as fast as you add fluid, with the limited time i've spent looking under it, the car appears to have some form of a hydraulic assist attached to the steering, is this something to commonly fail?


and secondly: you can see my the attached picture that my brand new tie down strap failed and sent the car sailing into my tailgate last night bringing it home... so, is it worth it to buy aftermarket replacment pieces, or try to hold out for a factory piece? i need a bumper and a valance, and a harmonic balancer...

I finished restoring my 68 hardtop last year and I'll tell you from almost 4 years experience restoring it and ordering a hell of a lot of reproduction parts - don't buy repro. If you have the additional funds (more expensive for the original) and can find them, always buy original parts. I didn't have the funds and actually couldn't find some original parts so I have a lot of repro stuff. I'd guess I was dissatisfied with approximately 60% of it and either had to return them or re-shape them to get them to fit right or at least close. Repro parts I ordered that actually stunk were: front valance, rear valance, front bumper, dash pad, trunk lid, exhaust system, wheel well moldings, hood springs (wouldn't hold a feather up), and several other smaller parts. You'll save yourself a lot of misery by buying original. In hindsight I wish I had just spent or borrowed the extra money.

i've been searching pretty hard locally and found a few collector's/part's stripper's that have most of what i am looking for, but the next thing i noticed today was that the car had NO oil in it, i added 2 quarts to get it to barely show on the dipstick, so i'm not real thrilled about this... in hindsight i should have checked myself rather than believe everything was good...