Ive searched around cant seem to get a good sense on the issue here since most people confuse oil on spark plugs as being oil on the ceramic part and in the tube with oil on the actual threads and electrode. I had oil on my #3 plug threads a while back and checked my compression and all cylinders seemed to be good, cant remember if i did a leakdown at that time. Fast forward a couple months and i now seem to have oil on all my threads, but more on #3 still. Car still runs fine, does not smoke to the best of my knowledge, and does not consume more oil than it ever did.

Motor has over 230k miles on it and had the head re built with new headgasket, valves and seals, and all new upper gaskets INCLUDING the tube seals under the rocker assembly. Bottom end was never touched. My guess is oil control rings/piston rings in general are losing tolerance being such a used motor. Im def not planning on a bottom end rebuild I just am curious to know if my assumption is correct.

 

the spark plug tube is actually 2 parts. THe valve train/rocker assembly sits on top of the head. it starts to leak at the rubber Orings between them. The spark plug hole fills with oil, you take the plug out and the oil drops into the cylinder

 

Like I said though, tubes are dry only threads are wet.

 

My experience is that when you rebuild a head and don’t touch the block, the block soon goes, as in comp rings and oil control wear out soon after.

 

Its probably your valve stem seals leaking

To verify a valve stem seal leak you can remove the exhaust manifold and examine the exhaust ports in the head. If they look dark and wet then your valve stem seals are shot

 

 

If it was the valve seals the oil would still go out the tail pipe as blue smoke. the oil can only come from two places, Valve cover and the rocker arm tube. UNLESS you have a crack somewhere in the head. Did you use RTV when you replaced the gaskets? IF your really thinking its oil rings (doubt it but what the heck) take out the plugs and dump a few ounces of Seafoam in the plug holes/cylinders and let it sit overnight. In the morning crank over the engine to blow out what ever is left in the cylinder. And then install the plugs. It will smoke like heck for a bit but that should loosen up any gunk binding the rings

 

OP already stated, tubes are dry. So it is not the rocker arm portion of the tube seals and it's not the valve cover portion of the tube seals.

The oil is on the business end of the plugs basically. On the threads. And yet, OP isn't reporting oil fouling of the plugs.......

At least that is how it has read to me and possibly others to indicate it's bad rings or bad valve seals.

Also, there probably is blue smoke out the tail pipe but unless it's a crap ton of it, it usually doesn't go thick enough up to be seen in the rear view mirror. I see this all the time driving around, people have no clue their cars smoke blue as it is light enough to dissipate enough to not be seen without being followed.

 

Valve stem seals are notorious for getting hard and leaking. Use to be common to see integras with full exhaust puff a cloud of smoke into vtec and rear bumpers covered in soot.

Compression test was good so I doubt the piston rings

 

I just doubt its valve stems being that they were replaced when the head was and that was like a year ago. I think its hard to see any smoke too cus i have no muffler so my exhaust kinda dumps below my rear bumper.

 

On the seafoam suggestion, ive heard of people with high mileage motors running seafoam through them only to have worse performance due to the carbon keeping the compression and valves seated