I was cleaning my engine and noticed a valve cover bolt was loose. I have a 99 coupe with an engine that was just rebuilt pretty much stock. I started looking around and noticed some oil coming out from under my spark plug covers on the valve covers. I pulled off the cover and there is oil all over like it was being pushed out. I notived some more of my valve cover bolts were loose, in the process of checking this out. The black rubber grommet or whatever covering the spark plugs is coated with oil. Is this normal?
I left it alone and replaced the spark plug covers because I'm not sure on if this is the way it is supposed to be or not. I then tightened the rest of the vavle cover bolts I could reach and finished cleaning the engine off. When I started the car about 2 hours later after letting the engine dry, alot of white smoke came out my side pipes for a couple seconds, and then a little white smoke steadily came out for a few minutes. My car seems to have a small amount of more power now and sounds a lot better through the exhaust. It's like the enigne is running is a little faster too or something...maybe idling higher or ...yet it still is around 800 rpms when just sitting. Any thoughts or suggestions on this is appreciated. Thanks.

 

white smoke = cracked headgaskets.

 

You either cracked a headgasket or the white smoke is burning oil coming out of your car. Run sea-foam through and see if the white smoke returns afterwards.

 

the white smoke only came out for a couple minutes. Do you think it had something to do with tightening the valve covers? Some of the bolts could be turned with my fingers when I noticed it. Would the vavle covers not being tight have something to do with a head gasket cracking?