What does it mean if there is oil on the spark plugs?

[Deir99]

The car threw and engine speed sensor and when I went to check the engine there was oil on the spark plugs

[walky_talky20]

It means your spark plugs are oily.

J/K. It just means your valve cover gasket is leaking. Part of that gasket seals the top of the spark plug tubes. Very common.

You should replace the gasket. After replacement (or during, your choice) you simply remove each spark plug, clean it well. You can wash the residual oil in the tube down the hole into the combustion chamber using Brake Parts Cleaner. If the amount of oil is ridiculous (like, the entire tube is full) then try to soak up as much as you can with some paper towels first, before you remove the spark plugs. After doing this, the exhaust upon first startup will be quite smoky as the oil/brake clean mixture burns off. This is normal.

[q5 dave]

Replace valve cover gasket. Super easy just got it done a few weeks ago. While your in there might as well replace half moon cam chain tensioner gasket as well.

Have a few shop towels and cans of brake clean.









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[walky_talky20]

I actually just did a VC gasket and Cam Chain Adjuster gasket/half moon the other day.

Top Tip, Turn the Intake Cam backwards a bit to get all your chain slack up top. Makes it much easier to clean out the half moon and gasket area. I used a bungee strap to hold it.

[cactus_cars]

Engine speed sensor can either be the cam position sensor(s) (2.7TT, 2.8 or 1.8T) or the crank pos sensors. I had a CRANK sensor connector that was shorting out and it was causing the car to throw a CAM sensor code.

Can be a lot of things.