I am restoring a 1946 bigbolt fire engine pumper. The motoer in my truck was I thought a 216, however when I did some repair work on it found it to be an early 235. The information I found was that most at least up to 1946 were painted battle ship grey durning the war yrs. However to engine in my truck is black which was confusing to me. I did some spot sanding and found it to be black down to the bare metal.
Bottom line is I repainted it black. I would agree with Jim, paint it the color you feel confortable with.
