I know this is off topic, but I figure I'll get a response here quicker than another board.

My wife drives a 99 Cirrus and I pulled a plug wire today after changing the oil and there was alot of oil in there, enough to cover the entire plug. Is this as simple as a valve cover gasket or the seals beneath the plugs? The car does not smoke at all and has no issues with loss of power or misfiring, so I was really surprised to see this!

 

It is probably just the valve cover gasket leaking. Not too tough of a job so you might as well just get it taken care of.

 

I agree with Silverram99. Probably valve cover gaskets because if you have that large of an oil leak around the spark plugs you would be killing off all of the mosquitoes within 3 states.

 

That's why I'm thinking it's not the valve cover gasket, there is absolutely NO smoke

 

If it was coming past your spark plugs it would be coming up from the cylinder which would cause the smoke. Does your vehicle have anything else near the plugs that could be leaking the oil into the plug wells?

 

OMG, it's the valve cover gasket. Not so much the gasket but the round plug well seals. They go on the valve cover around the spark plug wire and plugs where the valve cover and head meet.

It is simple and guessing you got a 4 cyl it shouldn't take and hour. Giveing you will have to hunt tools and clean up the valve cover.

I own a 93 Taurus SHO and it's the exact same thing, anytime you have plug wells you have seals in the valve cover to keep oil out. It will puddle in the plug well and eventually cause a miss. A little may leak down around the plug but it isn't enuff to cause smoke.......

Not buy that $40 valve cover seal set. It comes with the valve cover seal and the plug well seals. Do them all while it's apart.

If it starts missing, take some paper towles and a long screw driver. Push the paper towls in the plug wells around the plugs and soak the oil up, may need a long pair of needle nose pliers to remove the paper towls after you get them in there. Do it till all the oil is dried, spray the wire boots with some carb cleaner to clean of and dry up the oil.
This will save you some time to get to do the seals.

Trust me it's the plug well seals leaking...............................

 

Those cars are known for the plug well o-ring seals going. You have to replace the valve cover gasket at the same time. It's just leaking down into the plug wells. They also have that problem with the DOHC 4 cylinder motors, Ford has that problem with the DOHC 24 valve SHO motors, Toyota with their 4 cylinder motors. It seeps over time and puddles up in there. If it bothers you that its there swap the valve cover gasket. If not then leave it alone, its not hurting anything.

 

Thanks guys, looks like I know what I'll be doing next weekend!

 

my son's 93 honda accord did this. he's in school about an hour away. he called and said... " the car is shaking when its accelerating, especially up a hill. if you mash the gas farther and speed up, it goes away." so i put the tool box in the truck and headed over, and bought a set of plugs on the way over. drove it around some and it was skipping/missing under load. cranked and idled fine. i pulled the plug wires out and 3 of the 4 plug wells had oil in them. the valve cover gasket was about 4 years old. i wasn't sure if the oil would cause the miss or not, but since I had the new plugs, i went ahead and changed them. since I was in the dorm parking lot i didn't want to change the valve cover gasket. so i used a paper towel to soak up as much oil as possible before pulling the old plugs, so not all of it would run down in the cylinders. changed the plugs, cranked it up, let the oil burn off and it ran fine. a couple of weeks later he was home, and we pulled the plug wires and looked into the wells, and they looked fine no oil, so i decided to put off the valve cover replacement and just wait and see. The next day he called and said "its doing it again." That night when i looked at it it was skipping during idle and i could hear a snapping sound like a plug grounding out. the plug wire boot insulation was burned all the way through down near the end. So we put on new wires, cap, rotor and that fixed it. we check the plugs periodically and the oil has not come back, so i'm not sure why it filled up once and then not again. i'm sure someday i'll need to replace it but i'll wait awhile.

i'm not sure if the oil in the plug well lead to the burn through of the spark plug boot, or if it was just a coincidence.

my message is.. if you have some oil in the plug wells, and you don't have the time, money, or know how to fix it, you can soak up the oil with a paper towel periodically and put if off for awhile. a very small amount doesn't hurt anything. a larger amount MIGHT be related to skipping and plug wire burnout.