Oil where it shouldn't be?
 

After splitting the work over several weekends, I finally completed a pretty good tuneup of my 98 GT. The car seems to run and idle significantly better, and doesn't seem to use as much gas...

One problem I noticed was during the changing of the plugs and wires. On cylinders 6, 7, and 8, when I removed the old plugs there was oil on the spark plug socket. It looked like fresh oil, which was just recently changed. The plugs themselves looked fine, as did all the other plugs and the old wires. The problem seemed to be confined to these cylinders.

My friend in CA had a similar problem on his SHO (not sure what year) and he had to have the valve cover gaskets replaced. When I look at the driver's side valve cover, there appears to be an oil leak near the bottom around cylinders 7 and 8.

Is this my problem, or do I have a bigger issue to worry about? The car runs fine, and doesn't seem to use an excessive amount of oil?

By the way, thanks to whoever posted the hint to use a long extension and u-joint to get at the #4 plug a while back. I myself used a combination of a short extension, then the u-joint, then a long extension to clear the bracket. When putting the plug back in, I also had to remove the rubber insulator from the spark plug socket and just be really careful when tightening down. The spark plug socket kept getting stuck on the plug with the insulator...

Thanks,

3 words:
Magnetic Plug Socket... Makes life significantly easier...

Thanks, Hammer...I'll definitely pick on of these up before I change plugs again. Any ideas on my oil problem? You seem to have these engines pretty well figured out, to say the least...

Thanks,
Greg

First thing that comes to mind is possible blow-by in the cylinder\s...

ouch...

Is the oil on the outside of the plug? If so its most likely from the valve cover. If it's on the "SPARK" side of the plug you got problems

That's what I thought, surfbeast. The "spark" side of all 8 plugs were fine. Kind of a light grayish (they were platinums) with the gaps pretty much in spec and no damage to the electrodes.

Why what Hammer is saying makes me stop and worry a little bit, is that I don't understand the connection between the valve cover gasket and the spark plug holes (I've never pulled the covers before) on my car.

On my friend's SHO, and on Cobras, the spark plug holes appear to travel right through the valve cover. So a blown gasket would make sense...but on my GT, the spark plug holes are not in the valve covers and don't appear to pass through them.

I should probably just pull the cover and see for myself. As I said in the original post, it's leaking out the back and bottom anyway.

Thanks for the info,

We're crossing our fingers for ya!

Let us know the outcome...

I doubt it's blow by if the oil is on the outside of the plug. If it was blow by you would see oil on the combustion side of the plug, which you already said was okay. Only thing i could think of would be valve cover is leaking but honestly you should be able to see that because the plug sits away from the valve cover so you should see oil leaking from the over to the plug wire.

Bill

Thanks, Hammer...I surely appreciate the help and support.

Worst case scenario, if something's horribly wrong and I'm looking at major engine work, what's a good course of action? I was thinking of maybe buying a used 98 GT engine for a rebuild and addition of a set of 99-up heads, or maybe a used 99-up complete engine. Not looking to do anything too radical with the car except maybe get the extra HP the newer heads provide...plus some of the standard bolt-ons.

If the worst has happened I'd go with the 99 up engine and compurter. Not a huge difference in price between the two but a good bit of HP. the head upgrade alone will cost you an extra 1,200 bucks and I don't believe there is that much difference between a 98 - 99 engine. Try MPS online, they have the used engines.

Could it possibly be a crack in the head, in the vicinity of those cylinders? Seems to me that'd be a pretty extraordinary crack (spanning 3 cylinders)...also the coolant level is fine and the oil and coolant don't seem to be getting friendly at all.

Problems with the heads don't bother me as much. I'd have to suck it up and buy the head swap kit, which I was planning to do soon anyway. But the prospect of anything being wrong with the bottom end, based on limited time and funds, scares the crap out of me...

Thanks,