Tracy47

Here's what we have:

2000 Civic EX - 2dr - d16y8 - 164,000 miles, bought it in December($2700) for my 17 year old son. Uses about a quart of oil every other week, but no oil leaks under the car. I'm not a mechanic or anything and know very little about Hondas.

Has been running good until recently when it wouldn't start. Spark was weak, so we tried replacing spark plugs. That got it running again, but we were only able to replace 3 of 4 plugs. One plug was stuck tight. We noticed there seemed to be oil leaking into the tube. So we left it until we could work on it more. This week we tried penetrating oil etc. but could not get the plug out and didn't want to force it and break it off.

Two days later the plug wire on the one that was stuck was popped off and rough idle. Put the plug wire back on and it seemed fine again. My son drives about 10 miles to school/work and back every day. He now has to stop once in between to put the wire back on as it pops off between home and school. He noticed there is steam/smoke coming out of plug tube when he goes to put wire back on. Yesterday he said the engine starting running hot and misfiring.

Could anyone help us figure out what is wrong and how we can fix it ourselves if possible. Thanks!

SpeedRacerEX-R

There are some seals in the valve cover that prevent that. My guess is that someone took the valve cover off and didn't replace them.

TomCat39

And for the plug wire popping off, it sounds like the spark plug was cross threaded and now that you've tried getting it off with penetrating oil and trying to loosen it with sockets and all, the plug is no longer sealed and combustion gases are able to seep around the plug and build up pressure to blow the plug wire off the spark plug. The end of the wire seals up at the bottom of the tube so the pressure has to be building from the spark plug to combustion chamber.

Unfortunately, I am going to have to recommend taking it to a competent mechanic who can force the plug out and if need be use helicoil to fix up the threads.

It's not a job I would recommend any home mechanic without a full range of shop tools such as a full size air compressor etc.

I would probably ask multiple shops I feel confident in about re-threading a cross threaded spark plug and pick from the one with the more informative answers. The one who can provide the greatest details is the most likely to have experience doing the job a time or two. The hard part is judging the competence of shops without actual experience with them just because everyone is fighting for business.

Tracy47

Thank you TomCat ~ I would not tackle that job myself. My son's dad is a competent Ford mechanic, so I don't doubt that he could do it if he wanted to. Unfortunately, it seems like he does not want to work on cars outside of work if it isn't necessary. He told my son that it could run for a couple of years with one plug stuck and did not want to waste time pulling the head to get it out. Hopefully, this now qualifies as "necessary".

Can you give me an idea of whether the oil in the tube would be a problem going forward? My thoughts are that we should just do the valve and spark plug seals while it is apart.

Thanks for your help!

TomCat39

I have heard of others saying the oil in the tube can short the wire, which in turn can damage the coil and/or the ignitor.

Your civic has solid tubes so the oil would be from the spark plug tube seals on the valve cover (top of the tubes). Very cheap to replace. The valve cover gasket is more costly.

I know I had oil in my spark plug tubes for awhile and never had a problem. I guess it depends on how high the oil gets in the tube.

Also in my case it was the head design that has lower tube seals (your car does not have these) so the oil leaking in was from down low and would not build up as it would seep back into the head the way it came.

In your case the oil has no where to go and so will build up as there is no lower seals on your head design. Eventually the oil will get up to where the contact point is on the spark plug.

Hopefully you find this information helpful.