The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Is a Chevy 235 painted blue or gray?

I have seen 235s in both blue and gray. The Jim Carter catalog lists gray paint for a Chevy 6-cylinder. Chevy Duty lists blue paint for a Chevy 6-cylinder.

I did search the archives, it looks like this question has been asked a few times, but never answered definitively.

Can someone shed some light on this for me?

Thanks.

For the record, I have a 57 1/2 ton. The engine was orange when I bought the truck, with no traces of original paint.

slayte,

Good luck on agreement and on "definitive" answer(s).

Chevy Duty is selling the wrong color paint for a Chevrolet truck engine, unless it is Blue-Gray.
I have used Jim Carter's gray (too bad they did not give me correcxt information on how to thin it).

Blue was used for 235 car engines (Blue Flame Six) from at least 1954 onwards (also, maybe on the car engine in 1953 if it equippped with Powerglide transmission). Blue was also the color of 235s from '54 onwards on the Panel Delivery engines.

Truck engines were gray. It is not clear if the gray color changed a shade in 1954 or between the 216 and 235.

Shops often used orange after 55 because that was the V8 color.

Here is a webpage on this matter: Note that it says your engine would be green (maybe - was it a Loadmaster or a Thriftmaster - I read the info below as being confusing for '57 which matches '56 which matches '55, except for Thrifmaster or Thriftmaster Special).
http://www.danroy.com/tech01.html

Note the blue-gray versus gray (versus green) for different year 235 truck engines.

Maybe there are simply no definitive answers to some questions.

Best wishes,
Tim

Thanks Tim, that article is excellent, and explains a lot about why there is so much confusion and disagreement on this matter.

As for me, mine is a Thriftmaster, but is a 57-and-a-half, where they started bolting on some 58 parts towards the end of the 57 production year. Therefore, I can't begin to guess whether they painted the engine in 57 or 58 colors (not that it matters much since the author was making major assumptions during those years, anyway).

That makes it a toss-up between green and grey, and I like grey better, so grey it is.

Thanks a lot,
Ed

Gray was for 216, 235 truck engines. Green was used on early 261's, which may be what they called Loadmasters. 261's were not originally used in half tons to my knowledge.