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as the title suggest, coolant light came on, friday night, sat morning, took cap off to top up with water, radiator full of sludge, went round to resvoir bottle, full of sludge!

Not overheating at all, just bit smokey the last weekk, for all intents and purposes cars been fine or so when starting up, took it our that night and it was driving fine, lost some oil over the last few months.

RX_EJA wrote:

as the title suggest, coolant light came on, friday night, sat morning, took cap off to top up with water, radiator full of sludge, went round to resvoir bottle, full of sludge!

Not overheating at all, just bit smokey the last weekk, for all intents and purposes cars been fine or so when starting up, took it our that night and it was driving fine, lost some oil over the last few months.

Might just be condensation etc...
before assuming the worst, give the cooling system a real good flush out with a hosepipe, engine block, radiator, res bottle and heater matrix, then see how you get on. What's the oil like? You should be able to see if it's got a lot of water in it. The engine will use oil, the metering pump sucks it up and pumps it into the inlet to lubricate the seals.

Pictures help a lot. Sludge could be the normal sludge. Pressure testing the cooling system will tell you if you've got a serious problem.

Any steam/white smoke coming out the exhaust once warmed up?

Failing 'O' ring seals in the inlet manifold will loose water. But I can't see oil getting introduced there.

It might explain the fumes and smoke on your start up vid though.

Immediate check....look over from the nearside wing to the back of the carb. Any water ponding in the recesses there (external) where the carb meets the manifold?

Common occurrence at 15/20 years. Easy cheap fix but messy dropping the coolant and getting the manifold off

My water light comes on from time to time, but it's full, and clean, in fact I only recently flushed and changed the coolant...

When you say it has used a bit of oil, how much is a bit?

A little sludge is probably quite common, as mentioned already - clean the system, flush it through (I simplify things by removing the drain plug on the engine, and then using an airline in the top of the radiator to force out the last of the flushing water - my bottom hose joint looks a bit too iffy to play with - take the rad cap off, put your hand over the hole, and blow into the rad through the pipe that goes to the expansion tank ) and refill with new coolant.

Ian the metering pump sounds interesting and may be where ive been losing oil,

Put the old girl off the road now ,she runs out of tax end of this month, and if i get some time Im gunna start work on her when i can allocate some time and space, I think its fair to say that I wont be putting her back on the road until ive started and completed a full restore both body and mechanical, so watch this space.

Thanks for all the advise.