I have a 2005 Neon. It was running fine Wednesday. Thursday morning it was running very poor. Later I took to autozone and orilies to have it tested. Came back both misfire on cylinder 3. I pulled out the spark plug wire for 3 and that metal tube that goes down into the engine about 6 inches long came out with it. Spark plug had some oil on it causing it to misfire.
I know something similar happened like this some years ago. I have a poor memory of it or what I was doing. But I recall that one, likely the same tube came out when pulling the wire out. Perhaps when I changed wired and plugs a couple years ago. So then I just put it back in and lightly pounded it back into place and had no problems till now.
So my plan is just to clean up the plug and plug area. Get the tube tightly back into place. And reinstall the plug or perhaps give it new plugs. And that should fix it.
I am just wondering why that would happen? Sometimes I smell oil inside the car, seems to come in from the vents. A friend said that is nothing much to worry about prob just burning a little oil. It does not burn oil to badly. Prob have to add oil after 2-3 thousand miles, perhaps more.
Any thoughts on this?
Funny. I looked up this topic on a search engine. Found my old message from 2019. Was on cylinder 4 at that time. It was after I changed plugs and wires and I also ended up changing the coil. The oil must have caused the coil to go bad. Maybe I drove it for a longer time then that hopefully will still be good.
You need a valve cover gasket set, they come with new tube seals. Rock Auto has them for between 10 and 24 dollars. You
Well it turns out the spark plug was loose. Not sure if the tube caused the plug to loosen up or if the plug got loose first and caused the tube to loosen up or what happened. Test drove it after tightening it, ran perfect. It was 3 years ago that I changed these plugs. I do not drive the car in winter, its parked 6 months a yr.
It seems like if the spark plug is properly screwed in, even if oil got into that area it wouldn’t affect the spark. Just curious, what’s the purpose of the oil seals for the tubes? Are the seals at the top of the tubes, so oil doesn’t go down to the bottom and make a big mess?
The plug was very loose causing poor spark. I will keep a eye on it. It will be parked soon for winter in a week or 2.
There are seals ( 0-rings that are installed inside the underside groves of the top of the valve cover.i9f one of them cracks, the tube wilol fill with oil. That is not good for thr plug wire and boot.``
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If it was lose enough it would. With it being so far down I am not sure how lose it was, it could have been all the way out. Just ran the car 60 miles and it ran perfect. Seals are at the bottom of the tube.
hmmm … these spark plug tube o-ring seals must be oriented differently from car to car. The top orientation seems to make the most sense, but there must be other factors to consider.