Oil in Spark Plug Well

A6 All/ S6 All
#1

Hello all,

Yesterday, I replaced all the plugs with new ones. When I got to the middle plug on the passenger side, upon pulling the coil out, there was more oil than spark plug. The amount of oil in the well had submerged the entire plug.

Upon trying to take the plug out, I noticed a considerable amount of force needed to be used. It seems to me someone tightened the living heck out of this one plug.

I guess my question is with the 5.2, what could cause so much oil in the well. Could it maybe be due to the over tightening of the plug from whoever did it last? What do y’all think?

Thanks!
-Eric

#2

Overtightening a plug is going to do nothing other than maybe strip the threads in the head or break the plug.

If you do a search, you will find this is a very common issue with this engine.

I had oil in varying amounts in all of my plug tubes.

There is a seal that goes between the cylinder head and the cam upper guide frame.

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/300769200.jpg

It becomes very hard and brittle over time. When I removed mine, it came out in hard little pieces.

This is an engine out procedure.

Some people have tried smearing rtv around the inner bores of the plug tubes but I do not know how effective that is.

#3

So there’s 2 sets of spark plug seals, eng92? At first I thought you had a picture of the valve cover gasket for the spark plugs :smiley:

#4

The seal that is leaking is the one below the frame that forms the upper half of the journal bearings that the cams rotate in.

I believe a number of people on here have changed their valve cover gaskets after discovering oil in the spark plug tubes and have been disappointed when it did not resolve the issue.

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/350281799.jpg

One other thing I should point out for those looking to smear rtv around the inner bore of their tubes. The joint that leaks is not where you see the step when you look down the tube. You can see the step in the above picture. The joint is about 18 mm above that.

#5

Affirmative. I had no luck doing RTV around the joint. Pulled engine, cam carrier seal was brittle, replaced, no more leaks.

#6

Add to maintenance list: “Pull engine at 125k miles to repair leaks”

Oops, it turns 125k today.

I really need to get a two post lift…