oil on spark plug boots

C

Chico

Hello.

I'm new to this group. I found a message that is two years old about
somebody who found oil on his spark plug boots. I found the same thing
last night and was wondering what it could be a sign of.

I have a 2003 Subaru Outback Sport with over 100k kms. I replaced my
spark plugs last night and when I pulled the boots out I found oil on
the boots. Enough oil to drip. The oil looked exactly like my engine
oil, which was recently changed less than 1000kms ago. (I did not
change the oil.)

I noticed that the oil filler neck is very close to two of the spark
plugs. Is it possible that this is simply overflow oil? The oil does
not appear to be coming up through the plugs, but I can't guarantee
that. This does not explain the oil on the boot on the opposite side
of the engine though. I found oil on 3 of 4 boots.

The car works fine now, always has, has never burnt or consumed oil,
and gas mileage has not degraded.

My only recent issue what that when I was scoping out the job of
replacing the spark plugs, I pulled out one of the spark plug boots to
see how easy it was to access, and I could not get it back in very
easily. Things seemed fine until about a week later. The car began to
sputter when cold and I even had the check engine light flash at me
several times on one occaision. It was a couple of days later when I
decided to replace the plugs because I was pretty sure I had caused the
problem.

Any insights would be great. I'm trying to learn more about my car!

Chico
 
There are O-rings that seal the tube that the spark plugs are in from
the valve mechanism. You need to replace the O-rings and possibly the
valve cover gaskets. A common issue and not costly to repair, I
replaced mine in about one hour. I replaced the two valve cover
gaskets, 4 O-rings and the 10 rubber bolt gaskets. As for getting the
spark plug wires back on I found it very helpful to coat the OUTSIDE
of the plug boot with silicon or use dielectric grease. This make
removal and replacement easy. Ed
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
13,974
Messages
67,602
Members
7,467
Latest member
rmacagni

Latest Threads

Back
Top