Buddy's car won't start...oil and plugs story
 

Well for the past few days my buddy has been complaining that anytime he leaves his Z sitting for more then a few hours the car won't start right away. Most of the time he has to turn it over for 5-10 minutes to get the thing to start. He's been doing this for the past week.

Today we took the manifold off and checked out the injectors to make sure they weren't leaking or not seated correctly. They looked fine, then we pulled the plugs and found a bit of oil on the inside of the chamber and a ton of oil coating the actual ignition point of the spark plug and all up the threading. It was pretty much dripping with oil. Now let me break down the facts so you guys know what we got.

1. Plugs on both sides of the engine are soaked. Some not very much at all and others dripping.

2. The car is stock other then exhaust and intake.

3. The owner isn't burning any oil that we know of due to total lack of any kind of smoke other then a small puff right when it turns over.

4. The car has 90,000+ miles on it.

I did some searching about this before I posted and to be honest no one really mentioned having oil on their actual ignition side of the plug so I don't know if my bud has the same problem as the people with oil in just the chamber of the plug. After reading a bit I tend to think it's the valve covers but why both sides and at the same time? Maybe it was gradual?

Umm... run a compression test

what year?

Lots of people have the plug oil prob..

2003 or 2004 I forget.

We are going to have to find a compression tester but you would think he'd have some smoke if his head was blown. The puff of smoke that does come out is black like it's fuel.


Anyone have any ideas?

^^ Yes. Run a compression test and come back with results.