Thanks guys. CA great documentation in that post! Excellent way to scare a neophyte shade-tree wrencher like me away from even trying ;-) Winston, I saw that video last week after I started my research in the wonderful TBN archive. I would say that, after 1.5 hours hard mowing last week it was indeed at that level. But it starts easily -- once I put cetane in it's been amazing -- and it doesn't smoke start to finish that I can tell.
I'm wondering -- now that I've thoroughly hijacked the thread -- is there a relationship between overheating and blowby? Could it be blowing more because the engine is too hot? A post from a few years ago the guy was thinking he needed to muriatic acid flush his rad core and that would help. I still haven't fixed my engine temp light. Stupid, I know.