So, I have a 1990 Honda Accord with well over 200,000 miles. It has a leaky valve cover (about 1 qt a month, and it has leaked for quite some time), and I was planning on replacing that gasket this week. However, two days ago as I was at speed on the freeway, it seemed to sputter when maintaining speed. This went away as I accelerated, but would return when I had to maintain a constant speed. Went home and checked the oil, it was 2 qts low...a lot lower than expected. I added oil and didnt drive it until this morning. This morning, I started it up and it began to sputter and jerk, like it is misfiring, as I drove down the road. At one point, there was a brownish black smoke coming from the exhaust and when I opened the hood, I saw smoke coming from under the valve cover, right by the fuel rail. Oil level was fine, but the oil on the dipstick smelled like gas. No gas smell from where you add the oil though. Pulled the plugs, and they were covered in oil, and fouled. There was oil in the spark plug chambers, and I couldn't tell if if the oil was on the end of the spark plug, or just on the ceramic part. Is this bad piston rings, or just valve cover and spark plug issue?...or another issue I have not considered?

 

As far as the oil in the spark plug wells, me and my moms tried to fix the issue on my 97'. You may already know this, but there are some seals underneath the rocker assembly, when you replace them the keep oil from seeping in there.

HOWEVER

Me and my pops tried to fix this problem according to this video:

We also changed the distro and spark plugs and it started, idled, bogged, then cut off. We also just took off the distro, set the engine to TDC and reinstalled distro, and still nil.

Thats my two cent, i'd figured I'll chime in because no one else is lending me help either.

 

OP, on your car there are two sets of spark plug seals...one when you take off the valve cover and another set underneath the rocker arm assembly. In the previous post there is a video that you can use as a guide in order to replace the spark plug tube seals. There should be threads in the faq's at the top of this forum that also address how to replace the spark plug tube seals.

To the second guy please don't thread jack.

 

Thanks for the info. i will be picking up the seals and gaskets tomorrow. Hopefully, this fixes the problem, and its not bad rings