Rough Idle, stall, And oil leak

[Walmart_special]

This happened to my 1996 KIA Sportage.

Would you believe a valve cover gasket leak can cause engine to stall, run/idle rough?

The Sportage in-line 4 design recess the spark plugs below the valves with its own cavity. If you have a gasket leak (supposely fairly common due to some engine block warping issues), the oil not only drips on the floor, it also accumulates within the spark plugs cavity. (The last plug in my KIA.)

As the oil in the cavity raises, it leaks into the ignition wiring and prevents proper contact. It causes the cylinder to mis-fire, or not fire thus, causing stalling, or rough idle or significant lost in power, check engine light comes on, etc...

The obvious answer is to replace the gasket, but as mention before, it did not fix the leak. What I am trying is to put some high temp seal goo around the ceramic of the plug before I put the ignition tubing over it. Hopefully this will keep out the oil.

It is just bad design on KIA (Mazda) to allow liquid to accumulate around spark plugs. I currently have 147K, and hoping to make it to 200K. But now my rear axle is having winning noises. My fingers are crossed.

BTW, always check and replace your axle gear oil (my was low and black). This could have prevented my axle noise issues.

Now I have new oil in my transmission. It is hard to shift when cold... Sigh, go figure...