when changin my plugs I noticed that in the #4 cyl that I had a decent amount of oil over the plug. I could do a compression test and I'm sure it'd confirm that something is wrong. When the car fisrt starts up a little smoke comes out of the tail pipe. Plus my tail pipe has a black power like stuff all on the inside. My questions is more of what might be wrong.

One of my friends sugested that it might be the head gasket seal, I'm hopping it's something simple.

So what do you guys think it is? How hard is it to replace the head gasket.

 

Well it could be a couple of things. It could be the piston rings or the spark plug cover grommets. A lot of people will tell you if the oil is on the bottom of the plug, its the rings. And if its on the top its the spark plug cover grommets. But I have worked on many cars with the same problem you have and it turned out the spark plug grommets were really bad. So before you tear apart the engine I would change the spark plug grommets to make sure its not those.

 

The actual grommet that's on the spark plug or are you talking about a grommet that's part of where the spark plug sits?

 

I'm talking about the groment that goes around the spark plug cover holes.

Number 8 in the pic

 

more info? How are those replaced?

**Sorry, didn't notice the pict, it hadn't loaded for me the first time. I'm gonna hit up the honda dealership and take care of that.

 

Look up, I put a pic in the post. All you do is take the valve cover off and pop them out.

 

Do i have to redo the seal also?

 

they sell them as little kits with all the valve cover gaskets, there's a place in so.cal. called rancho foriegn auto there like 15bucks or so for the kit

 

how many miles on the car...

 

i actually just finished changin my plugs and wires about 20minutes ago and had oil on like the bottom of 2 plugs....but my car smokes cause i have a bad bottom end....my rod knocks too....but i have bad main bearings or something along them lines...thats most likely why my plugs were oily

 

170K miles on car.

 

I noticed some light gray or white smoke coming from my exhaust. I was stopped at a light and reved to about 3K. Was able to notice some white smoke out my side mirror.

Idea's if it might be part of the same problem? Other ideas?

 

im not sure if this is true, but someone told me that white smoke is bad..and if its black smoke its ok. black means oil and white means coolant? it could be valve seals.