Oil on the spark plugs

[poawd02]

I was a member here a long time ago and thought my 4th gen days had come and gone(i'm a subaru wrx guy now, but still have love in my heart for hondas!) Well my old civic, which my dad now runs isnt running. My dad went out to start it the other day and it was making a crazy kind of noise and wouldn't start. So i pulled the plugs and all four of them were coated in oil from the threads down(inside of the head). Now, my question is obviously what caused this? I've heard that there are seals on the inside of the head for the spark plugs and those might be bad and causing the oil to leak. There is no oil in the wells leading down to the spark plugs, because those seals in the valve cover are fairly new. The car is an '88 and has 218,000 miles on it and has never had any major issues with the engine, this is actually the first one! I'll be doing the work myself w/ the help of some friends. So I need to know exactly what part I will need to fix this. Thanks for your help!


Adam

[crxlvr]

maybe u fried the piston rings and oil is shooting up to the plugs.

[poawd02]

I had thought about that, but then I thought, what are the chances of all four rings going at the same time? That just doesn't seem like it could happen all at once. I dont know though, maybe it could Either way I'll most likely be removing the head this week sometime to see whats going on in there.

[CBURKE]

i had that happen to me before and it was the had gasket, but the car still rean i just had to put new plugs in it.

[1PhatCX]

clean the plugs off and try it again, might be bad valve stem seals lettin oil in, or the rings are old and no good now.

try doing a compression check first and let us know the readings

[Shaguar47]

I've got the same problem with oil on them, but my car is still running strong though. Seems like us both will have to replace the spark plug tube seals.

[4true]

i had that problem...i got a valve cover gasket kit..no more oil