1.4 petrol 1996 Head Gasket?

[5pot]

Hi,
I've come on here hoping for a bit of advice, trying to sort out my son's Polo, which has a fairly big oil leak from the back of the engine. It seems to be coming from under the inlet manifold.  I took the breather box off and it was chock-full of sludge, so my guess is the crankcase has over-pressurized. As its so difficult to see without stripdown, just wondered if anyone else has had the same problem and how they resolved it.  Have done a search and found one post regarding suspect head gasket but no definate outcome.

Any comments from those with similar experience appreciated, cheers.

[Caretakerplus]

Hello 5 pot,
Before you start taking off the cylinder head, it might be worth going a little further down the road which you have already started on. You say that you have cleaned out the oil separator, but is it now quite clear of gunge and are the hose(s) which connect to it also clear? - the hose which goes to the underside of the air cleaner is easy to miss off when you put the air cleaner back on the engine. it is also obviously important that the air can actually get into the air cleaner via said hose.
If after doing all of the above, you still have an oil leak, it might pay to get the engine steam-cleaned in order to see where the oil is actually coming from, as you say,not too easy to see down there,if you have a safe way of raising the car, you can in fact see more from underneath.
One final thought, the dip-stick is not the easiest thing to read, do make sure that there is not too much oil in the engine, for normal use (other than continuous high speed motorway driving) don't have the oil level any higher that the 'hatched' section of the dip stick.
Regards,
Caretakerplus.