they seemed to have some sort of a black coating on them, not sure what it was.
Interesting that you are trying to restore your car to original. I had thoughts of that after being bitten by the early Corvette bug, but (to me) its not worth doing it since there are so many of these cars. You still see them popping up with very low miles. Maybe one day about 50 years from now they'll be worth restoring ;-)