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Are they all the same or more than others? Some look normal? Are you 100% its oil residue – normally looks like thick black crust or slime, or do they smell gassy? Pull all the plugs and note what one was in what cylinder. If only 1 or 2 are oily its probably just valve stem seal wear. If they’re all dirty it could be something elese along with the wear.
If its just one or two of the plugs are like that get some additive for old engines, or switch to a high millage oil with additive in it to help soften seals up. Its a bandaid fix but can get you buy untill you can get to swapping the valve seals and then re adjusting the valve lifter shims. I use a Liqimoly one in my own car for that same reason and it works really well. Its also a good point to make sure you’re using the correct oil for that car.
If I remember right that car has a 6 cylinder, 24 valve non turbo engine. Fantastic engine that one! Any blue smoke out the pipe on start up or hard acceleration? Have you topped up the oil and are inspecting it for oil consumption?
Its all going to be age related. BMW uses a more sophisticated than most PCV/oil separator on their cars. It works on cyclonic principal. The actual vent part might be full of crud, stuck open and allowing crap to vent up from the crank case and into the intake. The actually cyclonic separator can also get plugged up and not allow oil to drip back into the crank case, siphoning oil into the intake. Its not difficult to remove it, clean all the piping and blast the separator out with throttle cleaner. You can even let it sit for a couple hours in hot dish soapy water to help dissolve the junk.
If all the plugs were dirty, or you just want to do some maintenance I would try that first and then top up your oil / clean the plugs up since its essentially free. Unless you know the valve on the separator is dead.
A side note, I know a few guys with BMW 6 cylinder engines and at the best of time they consume oil, hense the oil separator instead of just a PCV valve. They all bought high quality catch cans for their cars and mounted them so they look stock-ish. One of them was even modified with a port welded in on the bottom so the caught oil could follow the original drain back in the block. If you do decide to add a can into the system to help clean the vented air make sure its a good one and make sure you check it frequently. If they overfill you wont do your engine any favors.
I don’t think there was blue smoke on start-up but the car hasn’t run in a few months. When I parked it, it did run, but it will crank but does not start. It is low on fuel so I would have to add at least a gallon of fuel to the gas tank to make sure there’s enough fuel to start the car. But I am taking out the engine and trans to replace the clutch and possibly the flywheel. The car has 137K on it. Is the flywheel worn out, or should I wait to be sure that it’s worn out.
If the car has sat a few months and hasn’t run Id make that priority number one, not the oily spark plug. Was it parked because of a no start/ poor running?
One big thing to check is that the battery is at a good charge. Anything less than 12v the computer wont turn on. It may have 12v sat there but when you crank it you’ll loose a lot of its power to the starter. Quite often that’s the issue and its overlooked. After that do the usual no start with crank trouble shooting, Eric has some great videos on that. Does it have spark on crank, is there fuel pressure etc.
Get some fuel in it, get it started and let it idle for a bit, you can raise and lower the rpm yourself also. Let it sit running un till its normal-ized itself and you know nothing’s leaking or living in there. That exhaust is likley to stink too 🙂 Years back I parked my car for 4 months. I properly winterized it to store it while I was down under, took about 30 min of work to change and circulate oil before I fired it and make sure all the electrical was good – lots of mice where I lived. It started first crank but boy did it tell me how much she hated the old gas. What a smell!
When you’re content with that drive to the gas station, put half a tank of good fuel in and a full bottle of injector cleaner into it. Then go hit the highway and blow the carbon and cobwebbs out of it. Try to keep the revs up higher than normal, this gives you more fuel spray and more cleaning action. Usually an hour works great. Its enough time for the engine heat to burn off any moisture that’s accumulated in the crank case while it was sat.
I would get the engine going well before you take on the clutch job. Even if its un-drivable right now because of the clutch at least get it running and happier. You don’t need to pull the engine to do the clutch in that car. Its a rear wheel drive car. With the car on 4 jack stands and an extra pair of hands you can drop the driveshaft, Disconect the clutch slave cylinder, unbolt the bell housing from the block, remove the shifter and pull it straight out the bottom. Far easier than trying to wiggle the longitudinal engine out the front. You can use a floor jack and a slab of wood with to help move and drop the gearbox.
Replacing the flywheel will depend on how worn it is. If the clutch was worn to the rivets and the flywheel is gouged up replace it. If its got a lot of glazing or heat cracks on the surface replace it. If its still fairly smooth use some sand paper and remove the shine similar to what a new brake rotor looks like. You can do that leaving it on the engine. Make 100% sure you mark reference points on the flywheel and block so it goes onto the crank in exactly the same position. After that install the new clutch onto the flywheel, install a new pilot bearing too. Find yourself a good manual or torque spec chart and torque all those bolts accordingly. I like to use a thread locker on those kinda things. Then lift it up into the car. Two mechanical type people can have it done in a few hours.
I parked the car because the clutch was slipping. I only started it once while it sat, which wasn’t the best idea. I did buy a charger and charged up the battery. When it had the volts, it would turn over slowly and not start up. It could be the old gas , maybe something else, too. I actually have a build thread on it with lots of pictures if you guys want to read it.
The car also has an excessive battery drain issue too that I need to address.
I also re-read the first response and I can clean out that valve to help with burning oil. The car also had a leaky valve cover gasket that I replaced.
Sounds like the seals in the valve cover that seal off the oil from the spark plug tubes are leaking.
Ok guys, I have watched more how to videos and I did a few tests. My fuel pressure is low and even though I can’t start the car yet, The tests point that the fuel pump and the fuel pressure regulator are bad. I couldn’t confirm quite like the guy in the video did it, but things are looking good so far. I checked the coils and the resistance are good, so that hopefully confirms that the car is getting spark. I installed new spark plugs to make sure that wasn’t the problem (I know, I should have tested them first) and because I didn’t know how old they were, plus of them having oil on them.
I finally had to take the car in to a shop because I was at the limit of my diagnostic ability. The engine got flooded somehow. You could hear it in my video that the engine wasn’t making compression, but I had never encountered that, so I couldn’t reasonably fix that problem. The performance shop I took it to simply dropped a little oil in all the cylinders, and the car was able to fire up. I assume that they dropped the oil through the spark plug holes and hand cranked the engine over to lube up the cylinders. They had to do a ton more work on it, so it did cost quite a few bags of money. Unfortunately, in my state, we have safety inspections, and the highbeams need to work to pass the inspection. An auto electric shop is waiting on a part so that can be fixed for me.
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