I think about this a lot.. and what is your goal when it comes to keeping things original. Are you honoring the production line process? Because most of the metal including rear ends, front ends, castings all over the truck are done in sand castings and that is ONLY due to the need for efficiency of the production process. Much of the truck fit is terrible. The sand castings leave pits and imperfections in almost everything.
When I think of ORIGINAL, I completely remove the production process and imagine how a HAND MADE truck would be constructed, then take the original parts, clean them up, smooth things out, and use the best technologies of the era (sometimes a bit beyond considering the newer 235/261, Borg OD, etc) and make something the engineers of the day would be proud of if they weren't putting out a gazillion trucks per second at a factory who is naturally interested in maximizing profit.
