Tie Rods

[Pex68]

Has anyone seen this before?  I was cleaning up my original tie rods to restore and noticed the center where the zerk fitting is was painted black!  I lightly cleaned the one on the right first & just started the one on the left (you can see where the paint is just starting to flake off) and figured I'd better go grab the camera!  And YES, it's paint not dried up caked on grease.  Is this how they were from the factory?  No other signs of black paint anywhere, only the orange inspection marks from forging.  All the NOS ones I’ve seen were plain steel.  Also, pretty sure the outer is a replacement from the numbers stamped in the center and the zerk fitting but could someone confirm that too?  Notice that center is black also but doesn’t look like paint? 

[JohnZ]

All Chevrolet steering linkage assemblies were made at Chevrolet-Buffalo; on Corvettes, Buffalo painted the completed assembly with sticky black chassis blackout paint at least through 1967, and stopped painting them sometime in 1968 or 1969. We changed the complete steering linkage at Willow Run on the first 1,000 Norwood '67 Camaros (due to a heat-treat issue at Buffalo), but I don't recall if those linkages were painted or not.

[Pex68]

As always thanks John, I had never heard/knew of that, and obviously never saw it before.  It dosen't look as if the whole rod was painted, just the end cap, but I know GM wouldn't go through the trouble of just painting the end caps.  Maybe it just stuck better there because it was fresh raw steel-or the inital greasing preserved it??  I haven't touched them since I wanted to wait for a response.  I'll get back on them tonight to see if there's any paint under the grease on the cast part.

Sure would be easier if black was acceptable for judging!!!