Some minor issues (end result = head gasket)

[heavywoody]

You might need to have that plug hole heli-coiled. Sounds like the threads are shot in the head.

[ErichZ26]

wow, thats a rusty.

How is the rest of this car?

[irelynx]

Rest of the car is slowly eating itself away. Rear wheel well rusting by the gas door. Rockers are shot. Over the years I've taken care of alot of spots before they had a chance to rust, and they've held up fine, but I neglected the wheel well, and there wasn't anything I could do about the rockers at any point (besides replace them, and it's too far along for that to be worth while now). I suppose that's what I get for living up here and driving it in the winter.

[berettaboi]

yep, common for these of this age... i welded in new rockers on mine a couple months back, as well as welded in a new patch in the very usual driversside door jam... wheel wells i got down to the metal and coated in good rust stopper paint, and a bit of bondoglass to bring back to shape. replaced one control arm, and my other is slightly bent and getting done soon too. neverending battle, but usually works out less than car payments each and every month.

[irelynx]

I get to wake up somewhat early and do my plugs. I grabbed the spark plug socket to hopefully make things less frustrating with the rears. I had to order the wires (unless I wanted ones I had to assemble), so I'll have to pick those up in the afternoon, hopefully before it gets dark. I'm doing this in the driveway rather than the garage.

[woody90gtz]

That's the sad thing about these unibodies. They can be 90% decent, but if the 10% is the rockers, there can be a lot of structural damage hidden behind the first layer of sheet metal. I hate NY.

[3X00-Modified]

There isn't much hidden on this car, you can see up into the rocker almost the whole way down the side of the car. NY has eaten this one well unfortunately...

[irelynx]

Beat my lame old record kind of, lol. Took me about an hour from start to finish... a little less if you don't count time spent hunting for certain tools. Now I'm just waiting on my wires, which I had passed off the pickup slip to my mom to grab on her way home. Then it's just a matter of hooking the wires up, putting the coil packs back on, and starting it up.

It was kind of terrible that all 3 rears were pretty easy to remove, which means all 3 weren't in there nice and tight. Whereas the front ones took decent pressure to break loose. I didn't use anti-seize lube last time (because I was dumb and didn't know better), but this time I did and all 6 went in easy. Putting the new ones in, the only one that was a real bitch was #5 because there's so much crap in the way that arms have to go at horrible angles.

Onto pics of the plugs! It was #1 that was really loose and #3 was reasonably loose too.

[3X00-Modified]

#2 looks way too white, almost like the injector isn't flowing enough fuel, and #1 obviously looks very oily.. I wonder if its dripping from the valve cover down into the threads and then being loose just got in the cylinder, either that or your loosing ring seal on that cylinder. The rest look pretty good color wise, if there were no deposits on them it would be best but this motor is far from low mileage so you cant expect nothing to be getting in the cylinders.

[irelynx]

Ok, thanks for the analysis. I know that the power steering line that runs back there is leaky. Every time I was screwing around back there the back of my hand was getting wet from touching that PS line. Is it possible that's leaking down onto the plug? It's too cramped and dark for me to tell if anything else back there could be leaking. I know for sure that the front valve cover gasket has a tiny leak (drips from the gasket down along the engine between the seats for #2 & #4).

Edit: Turning the plugs over, the opposing sides of #2 & #6 both have a tan semi-circle on them. If that's the sign of fuel being burnt, then #2 has it, just not on the side that was facing the camera. My bad.

[DTMAce]

Those look like iridium plugs, are they?

[irelynx]

I don't remember what they were. They were NGK's, but I'm too lazy to check them for a part number and look it up. Edit: Okay, I decided to not be lazy lol. They were TR55GP, platinum.

I just finished throwing the wires & coil packs back on. The first startup was a little rough, but I'm pretty sure I remember it being the same any other time I've changed plugs/wires; always a rough start/idle for the first few minutes and then it settles down. Alternator sounds really loud compared to what I remember. I let it run for maybe 10min. Then I shut it off and started it back up again. This time around the first few seconds during/after starting it sounded like it was about to stall, but then it leveled out just fine. It seems to be idling okay now; doesn't feel or sound jerky/weird. I'll give it a few more starts over the next few days in the hopes that the actual startup will stop feeling like it wants to stall.

[DTMAce]

Sounds like you might still have a fuel delivery issue too then. At least the misfiring/stumble should be cleared up, but I would do a fuel pressure check at the rail, see what you have. I think it needs to be between 30-40lbs.... Someone will correct me if I'm off on that.

[irelynx]

That would be a job for Will since I'm not sure how to test it or if we have the right tool. I didn't even do a test on the coil packs today like I wanted to since I couldn't find a meter in the garage (and no idea if Will has one somewhere since he was on a roof elsewhere all day).

[ErichZ26]

Fuel Delivery Problems: This is why I purchased a injector machine for the shop.

Alternative: Check resistance + run injector cleaner through it on the engine. If fail: swap injector out. Start over.