01 Civic EX, 105K miles. Changed plugs and found about 2-3 cc's of oil in the well when I pulled coil off. Sucked some of it out with a syringe before taking plug out. There must be an O-ring or gasket under the valve cover that's supposed to prevent this. Our 96 Accord Vtek has a similar design and this never happened in twice the mileage. Is this chronic for this engine? I assume I need an entire gasket set to proceed. How tough is this? Thanks,
Don

 

im not sure what to do, but for the record its "vtec" not vtek, vtac, vtech or anything else...

 

Well, If your headgasket is shot, you're looking at $200+ for that gasket alone... not including labor (which is quite more expensive). If it's piston rings, you'll need even more money. But, I would say it'd be worth having a trusted mechanic look at before investing in anything.

 

I don't think that it would be anything MAJOR... like a headgasket or whatever...

How about the spark plug tube seals? They seal off the cams and it's oil from the spark plug wells.

My wife's car sprung a leak like this, and a new valve cover gasket and tube seals took care of the problem.

Just a thought.

Here's an illustration for purpose of knowing what I am talking about... it's #6 in the diagram:

 

Check all the seals on the valve cover, before jumping to major conclusions. I bet it's just the plug socket gaskets. They are real easy to replace too.

 

Time for a new valve cover gasket, and spark plug tube seals. They can fail from time to time. No head gasket needed.