I’m working on the big sister to yours, a K-80, as far as I can tell the lower unit is polished, tank polished, flywheel polished. On mine the carb is bare but the rest looks like it was painted silver. Some pieces do look like they are bare but on very close inspection I always seem to find a trace of silver. The fuel line on mine is nickel plated, I think the oil line is too. I hope this is of some help.
As for the paint on lower unit, I have a KA-37 which is the following year and it’s painted, then I have a KA-38 and it is polished, I’m not sure which on those is right or wrong.

Ok, now I have to take a closer look at my tower, it’s still grimy so it’s hard to tell. But the powerhead does have paint on the cylinders exhaust and spark plug cover door. Now I’ll take a closer look at the block, it’s still about as grimy as yours.
Hopefully someone else with a ’36 Johnson will chime in.

Yes, me too. I like it to either be just cleaned up and old or as close to what it should have been when new. Tanks can be a pain, I leave the dents and just clean it up and polish by hand. Unless it’s really corroded and pitted they look pretty good, anything is better than black paint on a Johnson.

Ok, so I went out and with some mineral spirits started wiping off my grimy motor. Here is what I found:
Polished parts, Tank, Lower Unit, Flywheel, Tilt bracket legs, tilt bolt and nut, tiller tube.
Bare aluminum, Carb, Transom clamp screws.
Painted parts, Block, Cylinder, exhaust, spark plug cover, transom clamp bracket, tower(leg), tiller bracket/handle

The painted parts on mine are definatly painted, and happily for me fairly bright under the grime so I might just clean this one up and not paint it. All the paint is the Dull aluminum finish. The block was not a light machinery grey, that’s incorrect for any 30′ vintage K Johnson, it’s the same silvery dull aluminum.

Many of the nuts and bolts show no sign of paint but I would bet they had some kind of finish or they would be a rusty mess by now. Maybe they had some kind of galvanizing, I don’t know.

The leg even though it’s painted really does look like bare cast aluminum. If yours cleans up nice maybe just leave it that way.

I hope this help, it’s helped me.

Again, mine is a K-80 but I’ll bet they were finished the same way. They also could have changed the way they finished motors part way thru a run, who knows.