To paint or not to paint?

That looks good Goyanks, what brand of matte clear coat are you using?

The brand is Kirker. I ended up putting 1 coat more than I planned which gave it more shine than I want. The top of the cab was still kind of rough so I hit it again. I think still looks. Thanks, Mike

If you do paint the truck, consider using RUSTOLEUM. RUSTOLEUM is inexpensive, applies easily and looks OEM. $100 would cover the cost and there will be money left for a drive-thru lunch at McDonalds, for two.
I vote for painting the truck most of the time. Now, I am not so sure.

Assuming I don't paint the exterior I would be fine with going the Rustoleum route on the interior.

Was the bed always a different color than the cab? Paint looks in good shape other than petina....which is awesome....I would leave it as is other than maybe some work on your bed. Maybe you can take the bed off and flip it over and work out the dents and repair the holes. Or leave as is....has character.

You could also reupholster the seat and maybe powder-coat dash if you want to spiffy up the interior for riders. They make a white powder coat that matches the white of the ash tray perfect .
There is a polish I have that works great on chrome knobs and such. I'll post a pic of the polish later tonight after work. I don't have a pic of it right now. Jay Leno mentioned the polish on one of his car shows years ago.

You can tell this truck was painted and I'm willing to bet the bed was not originally black. My family most likely did that at one point when they were fixing it up. I will have to ask next time I see them. The seat cleaned up real nice but year I should do something with the interior for riders. Even after wiping it out it's still pretty nasty.

I'm currently in that process now. I love the old patina, rusty look. I say leave it. I'm doing a cab swap and just sanded it down and sprayed a matte clear coat over it. Any major rust holes, I repaired. I also have some old bondo which I left as-is, just hit it with the sander.

I don't know much about body work. So did you take an extremely fine sandpaper over it to smooth it out before you sprayed it?

I didn't use anything more fine than 220 grit. I started with 80 on the real rough spots but you got to be quick otherwise you run the risk of taking off the paint and patina entirely. Most of it was done with 120 just to knock off any high stuff.

Instead of wasting a pile of $ on a paint job. Why not think about a wrap? Get tired of the wrap, peel it off & try a different one style. I saw a square headed car at the mall of america once that was wrapped in chrome. It sure looked cool!

If my paint looked as good as yours I wouldn't be touching it. Once you start down the paint path you'll want to take those few dents out. Then the few rust spots will have to go. To get to them you'll end up taking some of the sheet metal off. Then you'll see other hidden problems that really aren't problems but you'll want to fix anyway. So it comes down to what you're after, having a project to fill in free time, having a show vehicle or enjoying driving and using your truck.