I think, originally the dash would have been painted an immation wood look, to give the imperssion it was a piece of wood. Most I've seen the "grain" in the wood paint was gone, leaving a rust color brown.

Sounds like its been a battle from the begining. In case your interested, www.rustyhope.com makes a disc brake conversion for these cars. The original brakes were OK for the time the car was built, but pretty marginal these days. I'd update the brakes to modern day standards in a heartbeat, esspecially if your planning on doing a lot of driving. Cost wise, discs will be close to the same as redoing the original brakes. Just my Gene