99 strat 2.4L dohc ~95k miles while i was changing my oil the other day, i hate to admit it, but i got a tad sloppy with replacing my engine oil and some of the new oil found its way into my spark plug wells. car ran fine before this happened, and for a while after...engine lite starts to blink, stay on, blink..ect. she begins to run hard. once i got home i pullled the wires and plugs, dropped a plug (it broke). got 4 new ones. cleaned up the wires and wells, replaced plugs. car runs normal again, lite goes off. not more than 20 miles later shes running hard once more, lite begins to blink again. by running hard, i mean not violent vibrations in cabin but a guy can feel it. when in P or standing at a lite almost sounds like shes misfiring. because of time line of events i can't help but feel it HAS to be the sloppy oil replacement and gettin oil in the plug wells. I really have no idea where to go with this now. did she have a minor issue that oil in plug wells could have compounded? could that oil have damaged anything? if so what? what kind of other things could this be if its coincidence? thanks for reading, any suggestions?

 

Exactly how much oil got down the plug wells? Did you get it out before pulling the plugs? If you got enough in there it could have "wicked" up into the plug wires and is now wicking it's way back down onto the new plugs causing the eventual misfire you describe. I'd be getting a new set of plug wires, making sure the wells and the plugs are clean and go from there. You said yourself it ran fine before this happened.

 

thanks for the quick reply. thats what i was thinking too. i'll give that a whirl and post again. thanks again!

 

just what she needed. runs fine again. thanks again.