When you pulled the plugs, the oil in the spark plug tube drained into the cylinder, hence lot's of smoke on startup. New valve cover gasket and spark plug tube seals are necessary. Pay attention to how the old seals are installed and install new seals same way. It's not obvious which side goes up/down.

Greenish color on plugs could be dye from engine coolant from a head gasket leak. If you're steadily losing coolant w/o any obvious leaks or notice lots of pure white smoke on startup that may be the problem. A bottle of stop-leak may slow or stop the leak. Some leaks respond to stop-leak and some are unaffected. Head gasket replacement may be necessary if this is the problem.

good luck

 

Yea, I knew why it was smoking. Interesting on the spark plug color maybe indicating a head gasket leak - hadn't heard that before. I haven't been losing coolant, and no smoke at all - other then the oil from the spark plug tubes. I'm planning on taking it in for a timing belt replacement soon - assuming they'll be pulling the valve cover for that, so I'll mention the oil in the plug tubes. And maybe have them do a compression test while they're at it.

 

The green stain is on the porcelain top of the spark plugs down near the end of the rubber boot of the wires?
If so, I don't buy the headgasket as a possible cause for the green stains. The headgasket is well below that, & there isn't a real plausible way for antifreeze to get into the spark plug tubes.

But I've seen those stains too, & not really figured out what causes them.

The valvecover gasket can leak down into the spark plug tubes. But there's another set of seals farther down in the tubes. You have to remove the camshaft bearing caps to get those; so they normally don't get replaced during a timing-belt job.

 

Nope, this is down on the grounding strap of the plug. I found something else that say it indicates to hot a plug. Something about oxidizing a copper alloy in the grounding strap. Couldn't find confirmation of that though.

Thanks ... good info.

 

OK, I haven't seen the green stuff inside the combustion area of the plug.

Somewhere on NGK's website is a nice series of photos about reading the deposits on your spark plugs.

 

Yep - found that also. Didn't see any green stuff. I'll see if I can dig the plugs out of the trash and take a picture.