HELP: Oil Bath air filter, amount of oil?

[entice]

So I'm trying to nut out why I am fouling plugs.
carbon fouling most, but wet fouling cyl #1.
So after scratching my head a few times, I start from the air side of things.
Go to check what I thought was a paper element filter and low and behold, the underside of the hose connecting the throttle body to filter housing is soaked in oil. Not good me thinks.
pull it apart and it is dripping in oil.
I quickly learn that my car has an oil bath filter.
I don't think it had ever been pulled apart as it took a while to get the middle mesh to budge (in fact, I thought it was a complete sealed unit as the thing just wouldn't move, despite what the schematics I had seen were trying to tell me!) Quite  a fair amount of sludge in there, and quite a lot of oil. over all of the meshes and on the snorkel. Maybe the hose leading to inlet manifold was sucking in sludge and coating cyl #1 with it?
I've started to clean it all up, but I cannot find the "paint blob" or scribe mark that I keep reading about in reference to how much oil to add.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I am dearly trying to resist just putting a pod style filter over the throttle body....

[stickandrudderman]

Are you saying that your car's AIR FILTER is an oil bath type?
If you are then something is very wrong. There's no such thing as an oil bath air filter on these cars; at least in 36 years of repairing them I've never seen one.
It sounds to me like you have excessive crankcase compression that is discharging engine oil into the intake system.

[DaveB]

I guess clean it up and put it back in with no oil first to see if the spark plug clears up. Assuming your local air is clean! I don't know about the level, I would expect a mark as you say.
The boy racer pod filter will definitely lose you points..
Stick, the oil bath air filter and occasionally the underbody protection plates were added to some cars destined for primitive countries like Australia and South Africa!

[stickandrudderman]

Stick, the oil bath air filter and occasionally the underbody protection plates were added to some cars destined for primitive countries like Australia and South Africa!

Which is a great example of why I will never call myself an expert!

Never too old to stop learning!