So my camaro has been losing power. i checked the plugs and they were pretty bad, oil and stuff on them, smell like gas, one was so bad that it bridged shut and didnt even have a gap anymore. then it got even worse since i was a cylinder down. I cleaned them and put them in, huge difference. a few days go by and it starts to slow down again so i checked the plugs and theyre already getting kinda bad...its only been like a week! I checked the compression. between all 8 they ranged from the lowest 150, to the highest getting close to 165. I'm pretty sure my book said 150 was the highest it needed to be. is it bad to be higher than that? and do these readings i got sound about right? i wrote them all down if that helps i can tell you exactly what numbers they got. the worst plug is the number 8 plug, in the back left. thats the one that closed up. what could be causing that? is my compression ok? Oh yeah also, when i checked the compression it wasnt hot, still kinda warm, does that make a big difference or can i still get accurate enough readings.

 

Well your compression is good. Your supposed to have the engine hot to check compression, but I've done it both ways and it was within five psi of each other. If it where me I would shoot a couple tea spoons of oil in the spark plug hole and recheck the compression to see if you get any higher psi. If so, then may be just the valve seals leaking. But you probably need to do a leak down test. May be someone else will give you some better info, I just thought I would try to help a little since no ones responding.

 

Thanks i will give that a try. Every little bit helps

 

I'm sorry I was thinking about what I told you and realized I had it backwards. When you squirt oil in the cylinder and the compression rises that means the rings are worn. No change could be an exhuast valve.

 

Thanks for the update. i havent got a chance to try it yet since ive been working but either today or tomorrow i should be able to do it. are the rings pretty hard to replace?

 

Yeah kinda. You gotta tear down the whole engine and basically rebuild the whole thing.

Here's a good link to spark plug conditions. http://www.gnttype.org/techarea/engine/plugs.html
I'm betting you just need to get your heads rebuilt. How many miles are on that engine? Is your pcv valve good?

 

Worn valve guides or leaking intake gaskets can oil the cylinders.
Also check your PCV to see if it is moving a lot of oil.

 

its got about 129k miles on it, and the pcv valve is fairly new, i just put it in a few months ago the old one was kinda bad.

 

The PCV being new or not has no bearing on my suggestion.
The functioning PCV valve opens under vacuum. An open valve can pass oil into the intake manifold. Engines with a lot of blow-by (high mileage) often pass a lot of oil through the PCV system.
If you splice a clear fuel filter in-line with the PCV before it enters the intake manifold you can monitor the amount of oil it's passing.

I always run filters on my PCV systems to keep oil off of my intake valves, combustion chambers and sparkplugs. It also makes it visually easy to see if the sealing condition of the engine changes.