Z Bar Paint Color

I've seen most of them have trace amounts of zinc plating left on them, in areas that didn't get hammered with salt and weather.

Zinc plating (which is silver in color) over media blasting is going to be as close as you will come to an original finish, but the media blasting usually leaves a dull finish that a plating won't exactly take out of it.

I don't know how wild you are going with the details, but if you were going to enter a high prize show or something, you'd want to fix the haze from blasting and pitting from rust before plating it, which means you'd have about a 500 grit finish on it for the plating to have more of a reflective quality, or step up to a new one.

If this is going on a driver of sorts, just hit it with some zinc colored paint. It dries fast and it's cheap.

Cad plating is gold. Cad paint kind of sucks. I've used it, but it's not worth the price that Eastwood wants for all of the colors. You use zinc as a base, then the cad gold, and a transparent red and green to hit it from a distance.

Each can isn't terribly expensive, but combined plus shipping and you've got a typical plating shop minimum that would likely toss in a few other bits to have replated for little or no extra cost.

If you can't find zinc colored paint, go with the lightest color of silver you can get, without the high solivent "chrome" finish and it will look close, as well as dry after about 2 minutes.