gyea

Doing a little spring cleaning on the OLD! Mustang and was checking the plugs and got to #6 and found LOTS of oil all over the plug and electrode also tons of white crispy soot as well.
Should I be ****ting my pants like I am right now?? The car has been sitting in a heated garage since I took her to a wedding in July of last year. She only gets about 500km a year these days.
But I didn't see any of this the year before. Have I lost a ring on the cylinder? I'm working on getting all the storage stuff out of my garage right now to get ready to do a compression and leak down test. But what is my best and worst case scenario / how intensive would it be to fix...haven't torn down a motor in 8 years and that was my old 1993 escort...

jthorn9

Oil on the plug is never a good thing. That's symptoms of a blown head gasket, and or even worst, symptoms of a blown piston ring. Oil should never build up on spark plugs as oil is contained in the oil pan of the engine and should not reach the top side of the cylinder.

Derf00

How does it run? There is a third possibility since it sits a lot If it sits a lot, valve stem seals.

Blown head gasket you'd have water in the oil, be down on power, and or blowing smoke out the tailpipe.

Run a compression test, see how it comes out.

jwog666

if you arent noticing any smoking, oil consumption, or driveability concerns, i wouldnt panic, no sense taking apart a good running engine due t a little oil on 1 plug.

gyea

Compression test turned out well averaged 165 across all cylinders.
Leak down test would of probably went well but I dropped the thing out of the box and busted the gauge so that's out the window.
I don't notice any smoke oil is clean not milky.
Runs slightly rough but the car never really ran "balance a quarter on the bumper" smooth either...
You might be onto something Derf00 I do have a fair bit of valve noise and did want to get a valve job done or perhaps a supersix cylinder head upgrade but that's unlikely right now since my poor Canadian dollar is worth so little at this time...
Jwog666 Only symptom I seem to have is poor fuel economy...
I was going to try running a slightly thicker oil and see if I get less oil on the plug. Since the car is only ever driven in warm temperatures anyways and the garage is heated I don't think this will be an issue.

SteelerNation82

How are the rest of the plugs? Did #3 have any oil residue on it?

You may have the case of the PCV system drawing in excess oil vapors which tend to seep past and into cylinders, usually 3 &6 closest to firewall. Do some research on the Mustang 3.8 valve cover fix and you will find numerous posts/links describing the issue. I happen to have a 2000 as well, and have the 'faulty'valve cover on the driver's side which I can see by removing the PCV valve & grommet and looking straight down into the baffle. There is a small maybe 1/8" hole on the baffle which dictates it being the so called 'bad design'. I've ordered a replacement VC w/ the newer baffle & a new Motorcraft PCV valve to address this. After I purchased my car last summer I did a tune up to it and when I replaced the original plugs (102k) there was oil residue on the threads of #3 & #6. Just a thought to consider, good luck.

If you're comp. tested out fine that eliminates those possibilities noted above. Also, you have no smoke which confirms valve stem seals are fine. When you have leaking valve stem seals the car will blow bluish smoke upon start up.