I did say to Beasty when he mentioned this thread at dinnertime, blown HG across an oilway. or very very worn bores. Check your airfilter as the breather pipe vents into there.

I had a look over the engine tonight.

I have a military style breather, a sort of primitive cyclone. There was some oil in the cyclone so I gave it a good clean with paraffin and then dried it. There were a few drips of oil in the inlet manifold where the breather pipe connects (my breather does not go back to the air filter). No dramatic quantifies of oil and nothing blocked.

I started and ran the engine without the oil cap and breather assembly. It started on the first half turn and ran perfectly. There is a slight blue haze from the oil filler, but no heavy breathing. There is a definite smell of burning oil and slight wisp from the exhaust.

There is an external oil leak from the front of the manifold. Looks like it's from the first exhaust port. There was no oil lying in the inlet manifold. I know there is not supposed to be oil in the exhaust manifold, so if there was, would it leak past the seal? If not then the oil must be leaking from the headgasket (looks like it's above it to me).

I replaced the breather etc and ran engine again, all good again.

I'm still leaning towards a head problem. Valve oil seals or guides. I suspect this head was probably lying around in a barn for many years before being chucked on - no doubt with 20 year old oil seals left in place that would have cost £2 to change.

I just repeated this mornings drive with identical conditions and no problems.

The only difference this time was that my sphincter was fluttering whilst I was waiting at the traffic lights expecting the engine to take off and my bloody fan belt is loose again, have re-retention it 4 times now!

Had a problem similar to yours on a Montego TD. What was happening was diesel was getting into the sump, I think via lft pump and raising level of oil. When it got to a certain level it was just sucked up into the inlet. Quite spectacular! Keep checking oil level to see if its going up instead of down.

Oil level was lower than it should have been. It is using oil so I keep an eye on the level and it's always going down. Coolant level is always fine.

Don't think it could be a gasket between the pushrods as I would expect to see some excess pressure.

I work in Newton Stewart and live close by, give us a shout if you need a hand.

Thanks for the offers of help guys. I've arranged for the engine to be delivered to me as I can't trust the Landy at the moment.

It's once I've got it that I'm going to need the real help!