Hello.
I'm new to this group. I found a message that is two years old about somebody who found oil on his spark plug boots. I found the same thing last night and was wondering what it could be a sign of.
I have a 2003 Subaru Outback Sport with over 100k kms. I replaced my spark plugs last night and when I pulled the boots out I found oil on the boots. Enough oil to drip. The oil looked exactly like my engine oil, which was recently changed less than 1000kms ago. (I did not change the oil.)
I noticed that the oil filler neck is very close to two of the spark plugs. Is it possible that this is simply overflow oil? The oil does not appear to be coming up through the plugs, but I can't guarantee that. This does not explain the oil on the boot on the opposite side of the engine though. I found oil on 3 of 4 boots.
The car works fine now, always has, has never burnt or consumed oil, and gas mileage has not degraded.
My only recent issue what that when I was scoping out the job of replacing the spark plugs, I pulled out one of the spark plug boots to see how easy it was to access, and I could not get it back in very easily. Things seemed fine until about a week later. The car began to sputter when cold and I even had the check engine light flash at me several times on one occaision. It was a couple of days later when I decided to replace the plugs because I was pretty sure I had caused the problem.
Any insights would be great. I'm trying to learn more about my car!
Chico