First off- What a pain- Took me about 3 hours- 30 minutes of that was figuring out how to get that coolant line underneath the throttle body on the driver side off.

But the car went from recently being sluggish and hesitating/bucking to running better than it ever has (since i've had it).

I used bosch platinum plus 2's.

Here is the question: The amount of oil on all of the plugs/ wires was a bit scary. Is this a gasket problem and Is it something that i should be immediately worried about?

Thanks,
Zac

 

Change your valve cover gaskets.

You thought changing the plugs was fun? Wait til you try taking these covers off. At least you've done half the job before so you are that much ahead.

 

Same thing happened to me on my 180k mile motor its most likely the valve cover gaskets or perhaps the bolts on the valve cover just got loose. When i changed my plugs and valve cover gaskets i noticed the bolts for the valve cover were loose(perhaps it loosened itself over the years). changing the gaskets took me the whole day since it was pretty hard removing all the stuff over the covers. you were half way there when you removed everything to change the plugs, i guess you get the joy of removing everything again. you need 2 gaskets and it costs $15 a peice at carson toyota.

 

Damn you guys get parts CHEAP...

Oh yeah same deal happened with mine, changed the plugs and basically the bolts were loose and I had oil on my sparks, esp. on plugs 2 and 6, ended up being the rocker cover gaskets as they get dry and brittle so get those replaced and you won't have a problem

 

anyone know the part number for the valve cover gaskets? my car is eating quite a bit of oil.

 

11213-46020 and 11214-46011 theres 2 of them one for each half of the valve cover. 15 dollars a peice at carson toyota.

 

Thanks a lot, now does anyone know the average price for the installation of the new valve cover gaskets?

 

im gonna guess a mechanic would charge you 2-3 hours labor or so and that could be around $100-150. but thats just a guess. If your gonna change the gaskets might as well change the spark plugs and clean the tb as well since everything is out. it would be about the same price in labor if you did all those together. If your some what mechanically inclined you can possibly do this in a day on your own. you just got to remove everything like in cleansc's pic above, but i'd recomment you bring it to a mechanic so you dont mess up your idle or something worse.