On Sun, 11 May 2008 10:20:18 +0100, David Jones wrote:

He did talk about billowing smoke, not in the op but in his reply to me.
Sounds a bit ropy to me:

Hi Dave, yeah mine is at the worse stage i think. smoke bellowing out
of bonnet when driving. Major stains on driveway and having to put a
litre of
oil every couple of days. could be garage or scrap man even !!

Possibly not as bad as it sounds - when mine went the oil dripped
directly onto the exhaust manifold. So the smoke was being generated
outside the engine, not quite such a sign of ropiness..

Mine was retightened (and a couple of 'wrong size' bolts replaced) and
the smoke/drip went away. Until next time it started dripping, which was
just the oil filter getting a stone through it..