oil level?

Water or fuel in the oil, nothing else would cause it to rise. I suppose if you've got dodgy rings it could be letting fuel past into the sump on an extended cranking.

Alex

Probably fuel leaking in, maybe through the injector pump. If it was water you'd know about it by looking at the appearance of the oil.

Diesel-contaminated oil is a very poor lubricant so you'll be looking at replacing things like valve guides if you continue to run it like this.

Assuming it is a Series Landrover, it must be fuel or water in the sump. If water, the appearance of the oil should make this obvious. If it is fuel, the obvious source is the fuel lift pump has a perforated diaphragm, that is allowing it to leak into the sump. Can't be too bad or it would be impossible to start. Possibly a faulty seal in the injection pump, although I have not heard of this. A long shot could be fuel injected into the cylinders and leaking past the rings through cranking without firing, although to get enough this way to show on the dipstick you must have a pretty good battery. Another long shot is fuel getting in the same way through persistent misfiring for whatever reason. All of these should be fairly easy to find and fix, but I would not run it too long with a significant amount of fuel in the oil. JD

Supplementing the other answers, I would seriously look at the lift pump. This can leak fuel into the crankcase and is reasonably common.

This is one good reason for regular checks on fluid level even if nothing is noted from one year to the next. One day......................

Huw

thanks y'all for the ideas so far, my thoughts are along the lines of fuel getting in through cranking for long peroid. i drained some oil out this evening and went for a long run, i'll check levels again in the morning, no noticeable diesel smell in the oil i drained tho... when starting it was puffing loads of smoke ( acrid smelling like cold start smoke but also tinged with blue ), and running very lumpy too. steve

A rise up the stick while running is indicative of blow-by, otherwise I'll agree with everyone else...it could have been fuel being forced through the rings during the glo-plug issues. Un-burnt fuel needs to go somewhere and while you keep cranking you kept introducing more fuel.