I'm no professional mechanic... BUT..

[AxiOn419]

.. I know this is not normal.

Loose valve covers is what I HOPE caused this. A little background: a shop here put this engine in my car 3 years ago, I got in a car wreck a little over a year ago and the engine sat outside (covered). If this were all water filling the spark plug area then I could understand but THIS:

I saw no cracks in the area. The screws on the valve cover were noticeably loose but there was no oil seen on top of the spark plug wires.. which seems strange if the oil were coming from the valve covers. Any ideas what else it may be?

Very ugly:

Cylinder 1- mostly watercylinder 2- more water/oilcylinder 3- water/ more oil

Cylinder 4- pretty much all oil and very full/maybe a small amount of watercylinder 5- mostly oil but not as muchcylinder 6- almost nothing but a little water

Here are the spark plug boots:



So much grime built up on them from sitting in the oil/water

[Darius]

wait wait wait. was that in the engine itself after you pulled the plugs or haven't you pulled the plugs yet? For that much oil to be on top of the head is very strange. Have you drained the oil in the pan to see what it looks like yet? I'm hoping the entire block isn't full of water somehow.

[AxiOn419]

wait wait wait. was that in the engine itself after you pulled the plugs or haven't you pulled the plugs yet? For that much oil to be on top of the head is very strange. Have you drained the oil in the pan to see what it looks like yet? I'm hoping the entire block isn't full of water somehow.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. All of the plugs are still in and there is no way I am pulling them until that mess is 100% cleaned. I did drain the oil, there actually was not much in the engine, 1-2 quarts if that (I am assuming a lot of it is sitting on top of the head :p). The oil that came out of the engine looked as you would expect it to, nothing strange there. I am still debating the best way to remove all that crap from the top. I am thinking of taking one of those baby nose sucker things or a turkey basting little sucker thing (sorry for the lack of termonology) and just using it to take most of that out.

I hope I wont soon be a member of the "Non-Running RB Association"..

[Darius]

lol the NRRBA isn't so bad. It makes you stronger of mind and soul!

It is a good sign that the oil pan wasn't filled with chocolate milk so +1 for you being lucky. I wouldn't be too worried about it yet. Just clean that shyte up and pull the plugs and let us know what you find.

[AxiOn419]

Cleaning it up now with paper towels, appears to be mostly water sitting under the oil filled areas. Which makes sense considering I washed the engine as well as any rain that may have seeped in. Also, it appeared that the outside screw of the valve cover were a lot tighter than the inside part, which would cause a small gap on the inner part of the valve cover.

I will let you know when i pull the first plug!

[FriedEGs]

whew, that looks like the dreaded coolant/oil mix.. not good!!

I'm just glad to read that you drained teh oil and it was clean....

Check teh valve cover gaskets, that's gotta be the only way the oil got up there.. The water.. I have no clue.. unless it collected itself running along the inside of the hood, or dripped back by the firewall....

Hopefully, you're just cleaning up a mess with minor repairs... I'm willing to bet that your cylinders are most likely clean..

Good luck!

[AxiOn419]

Update!

Looks like things arent looking too bad now. I cleaned up the mess and pulled cylinder 1 and cylinder 5 (5 was loose enough that I could unscrew it with my hand!) and both cylinders have shiny pistons . I will pull the others tomorrow and see how they look, its just time consuming because I am making sure there is no water that drips down into the cylinder. I used paper towels to soak up the mess then I am using compressed air and holding a rag over the plug so it shoots the remaining liquid up and into the rag. There are no visible cracks or breaks in the valve cover so I will just attribute this to one side of the valve cover being a lot tighter than the other, looks like I may have lucked out. The spark plugs also look pretty healthy which was good.

[l0nestar]

Well that is good to hear! I actually shuddered when I saw the pics at the top..

[AxiOn419]

Well that is good to hear! I actually shuddered when I saw the pics at the top..

Yeah seriously, imagine how I felt pulling the cover off an seeing that mess, I was like

Let this be a lesson learned in making sure your valve cover is properly tightend and to ensure that if you store your engine for a long period of time, make it is water proof. Spraying it down with the hose may have added a bit of water too

[l0nestar]

Seriously,

When I first removed the coil-packs from my engine, I had some dust (looked like dried clay -- def not rust) INSIDE the boots -- I just blew it out with air and was done with it. Well, I also lightly rubbed the boots and plugs with a rag and that was that.

Glad to hear your engine was clean after sitting that long!

Oil leaking from valve covers -1 :-D Hopefully it starts right up!

[AxiOn419]

I sure hope it starts right up. I have the rubber boots sitting in soapy water as we speak. I figured I just better go ahead and get them nice and clean. The spark plugs are going to be changed out as well. I was having another oil related issue if you want to check it out, tell me what you think:

zerothread/283134

[Darius]

Depending on how deep the water was in the coil packs, they might be corrodid as $hit at the contact point with the plugs. Oil and water combine to make a mess of steel parts.

[AxiOn419]

I pulled the rubber boot off of each of the coil packs and the contact looked pretty good. I will have to take a picture of them when I get home. Are replacement coil packs hard to find?

[rb240det]

Nope they're readily available. Coilpacks from a Q45 will interchange, just make sure they're from cylinders 1&2...

[Abdo]

My god! The pictures up top scared the crap out of me! whoa.. Glad to hear that it's not as bad as it looks. Good luck with everything.

[S13 240SX]

omfg dude!!! i feel your pain and everything. : (god damn i hope you get it all out and rebuilt, or get luckky.

[matafied]

The 3erd motor set I got the engine looked identical, I didn’t even see it till I got the motor in the car. When I couldn’t turn the motor over (by hand) I started poking around and found the same thing, i guess where the motor was on its side during shipping so I pulled all the plugs cleaned as much oil off as I could. I was looking over the motor when my brother in-law turned over the motor; yea you guessed it, money shot all over my face! All the cylinders were full of oil and when he turned it over it shot oil all over me. But after I cleaned everything up, put in some new plugs and she fired right up. Smoked for about 10 min. but after that purrr perfect! prob. not the same here but hopefully she will be fine

[Shocker]

My buddies old 7M had the same deal. It still ran decent, but the motor went to junk fast.... His was straight oil though.......

[gawdzilla]

i'd put the engine on a stand and flip it upside down and brake clean/dry all that crap up. then pull the valve covers and make sure its not in your head too.

[AxiOn419]

I cleaned up the mess already, cleaned up pretty well actually. I am assuming this is what happend: Loose valve cover= oil leaked out over a long period of time (I used this engine for 2 years prior to the wreck). Rain/ me washing the engine with a hose added lots of water. So may not be as bad as it initially appears. I will take pictures when I get home. I pulled cylinder #1 and #5 plug, no oil or any kind of liquid inside, looks good inside.

[FriedEGs]

well, taht's good to hear that it was just something external..