...sigh...NO ONE is telling anyone what they can or can't do...they're merely advising you as to what you should or shouldn't do...
...every time this debate comes up, someone posts the red herring that 'people are telling you what to do with your stuff'...I suspect it's because the idea of someone telling you what to do, just really irritates some folks to the point where they can't realize that no one is actually doing that...
...all it succeeds in doing, is successfully distracting us from the actual topic: whether or not we have an obligation to preserve the history, instead of vainly rewriting it to suit our 'taste'...
...I've seen some of these 'customizations' - and some of them are so god awful tacky, that I'm compelled to disagree with the old saying 'there's no accounting for taste'...
...I see a customized pump the same way I see a nice, 'non-neon' sign that someone added neon to: it's a shame, and a waste of money...if the original look of this stuff doesn't do it for you, then why are you messing with it?...just create your own designs out of raw materials...
...in ten years - happily, after this 'tattooed-Jesse James-ultimate garage biker-gang-wannabe' fad only rears its ugly head as an embarrassing answer on Jeopardy - you won't be able to recoup the money spent as easily as you will be able to, if the pump was RESTORED to it's original appearance...
...'customizing' does nothing to preserve and protect the history - it actually does the opposite, by deliberately obscuring the truth of what this stuff looked like when it was used...and therefore, its purpose...
