before I remove the engine what are your thoughts.
The engine has been as good as leak free since installed about 2 years ago, couple of days ago I had it parked on a new concrete slab, no oil leak, drove it home about 50 minutes and mostly around 80 - 90 kph and parked it in my garage, next morning there's a great pool of oil on the floor, prety sure it's engine oil from the smell and the oil level has dropped on the dip stick, seems to be coming from between the engine and the box but hard to tell as it has a dropped sump which makes it hard to see.
Could such a major oil leak appear so quickly? is it hard to remove the dropped sump to check before removing the engine?. Idears please.

Don I assume you are running the vw engine in the buggy if so the sump doesn't come off,I would think if it happened that quickly that you have a leaking pushrod tube. The flywheel seal doesn't drop huge amounts of oil suddenly,firstup check the strainer and tubes and work from there,park it on a bit of grass or dirt and put some cardboard down then you check regularly to locate the approximate source.

my bet would be cooler seals or main rear seal

Grumble. yes it's in the buggy, I wasn't planing on dropping the sump to remove the engine, more to check if that is where the leak is, the leak seems to be running down from behind the sump, actualy in front if "behind" is at the back of the vehicle , from what I can see the tubes arn't leaking, my original thought was maybe it's the joint between the upper and lower sump (if there is one) the "dropped sump" is alloy but not sure how it joins on to the rest of the engine, then I gave consideration to the big end seals.
Greedy, cooler seals? not sure what you mean.
Any way it will have to wait for a while as I'm off to Adelaide tomorrow.
Thanks
Don