Oil in bilge...LOTS of oil in bilge. . .?

[reed1v]

All good ideas. But curious why he did not find an oil slick or oil drippings on the engine somewhere if it was blowing out oil or loosing it in a slow leak. One advantage of having a clean engine with fresh paint is the ease of finding what is going wrong. We painted our Perkins a gloss white. The entire engine. Easy to spot oil leaks, stray sparks, and exhaust leaks. Plus it brightened up the engine compartment.

[Martkimwat]

I'm not familiar with Lister diesels, does the dipstick 'live' in the dipstick port or do you put it in only to take the oil level measurement? could it be throwing oil out of the dipstick hole if it is not sealed? I had a similar problem with a Yanmar 2GM20 which Installed to replace a 1GM10, I noted that the dipstick was a lot shorter on the 2GM than on the 1GM (lower down the block) but didn't connect the dots when i then installed an oil level sight gauge which originally just had a tube which just sat in the dipstick hole without sealing it. Had worked fine on the 1GM but threw oil everywhere on the 2GM due to the lower position. Solved the problem by removing the sealing 'bung' from an old Yanmar dipstick and forcing it over the tube, allowing it to be sealed into the hole.