That's the weird thing, the cylinder liner, valves, cam all appear to be in "reasonable" condition. Given the actual engine must be at least 40yrs old.
The first thing I thought when I first clocked eyes on it, was oil starvation, but then on closer inspection of everything else, it almost doesn't tally up. 🤷
Then reading the bit from the bloke on farcebook who says he did the same thing to his going from London to Manchester. Maybe it was simply oil starvation. Guess we'll never truly know. Unfortunately it will just take longer and clearly cost me more money to sort.
I had always intended to strip it, to refresh it generally.
Just got to be a case of onwards and upwards. It was always risky buying it blind, but in fairness to the breaker I bought from. He did clearly state that he knew nothing about the history of the engine as he'd bought it as part of a "job lot" from another breaker who was going in to bankruptcy.