First welcome to the site. Hope you find the support and information needed in your concours restoration efforts.
I am restoring my 69 Mach 1 390 and have been here before but things have changed since the last time I did one. I know that the hood hinges, springs, shock tower caps and hood release are supposed to be phosphate and oil dipped.
Nope as mentioned before in other threads the "shock tower caps/beehives/shock mounts" were semigloss black on a San Jose car typically. You may have been looking at Dearborn or NJ cars in the past. Article titled -
Paint - 1969 and 70 - Slop Gray or Black Panels and Brackets - in the Library should help
My question is if I don't have the means for that is there a grey color that can be used in place that is a close match and is an acceptable replacement. I have seen some painted grey but not sure if its "Slop Grey" or other like cast iron grey . Thanks !
Overall you will find that few here suggest using paints to replicate plated or natural finishes and you will find tons of threads about this so no reason to rehash that subject. Just use the search and do some reading to catch up.
Slop or batch grey or cast iron spray would not even be close is not even close. There are rattle cans of "phosphate" (looks like on the scale of darkness to magnesium phosphate spray paints available at places like Eastwood but they IMHO and others opinion do not replicate the original look and they will chip and rub off and pieces of the part move (hinges up and down for example) through their use and operation
Phosphate and oil is the easiest and cheapest (in most cases) plating to do and allot of people do it themselves. There are a bunch of how to threads with tricks and hints if you don't want to just send the parts to have them done. Some forums even get together regionally - set up the process and do a bunch of different parts from different members as a social event