i have a standard honda civic 2000 lx 1.6l single cam. i will start from the begining.

7 months ago the car started acting funny, the car worked and seemed fine except this one problem. while the engine was hot and you reved it as low as 2k rpm, upon coming down to idle it was go really low and the exhaust would huff and puff and sometimes stall. the engine light was on for a bad catalytic and front 02 sensor. i figured the catalytic was in no way doing it's job for a while and it ruined the 02. i replaced both of them myself, the engine light turned off, the car seemed not to be fixed, but after a day of driving it started working normally again. still some huffing and puffing out the exhaust but very light

2 months ago. the car has gotten to the point where the exhaust is huffing and puffing the same as it used to be. no stalling but idle does get low. i take it in to get inspected and have to leave it there for a day. i get it back and upon driving home the engine light comes on and starts blinking on and off. nothing seems any different but i stop and shut off the car and look around and everything looks fine. i turn the car back on and engine light is off and doesn't happen again.

1 month ago. the engine light is starting to come on more freuently, still no signs of anything wrong with the car besides the light blinking. 30 minutes into a drive on the highway the car stats misfiring and jerking past certain speeds. i turned it off and turned it back on and it didn't happen the whole 45 minute ride back. i get home and look in the daylight to see a spark plug has risen and when i pull it out oil comes leaking out.

i am not the most experienced with cars but i am learning and i make sure i have all of the information before doing anything to my car. i figured the leak was caused by the valve covers and it was casuing my misfire. so i got a valve cover set and replaced them all. when installing the covers that fit over the spark plugs i messed up a little and didn't fit them completely around all sides after tightening it. each one has a little part of it stick inbetween the metal. i figured if it didn't work there was no harm to the car and that i could try again. i took out the spark plug cleaned it with a dry cloth, cleaned out inside where it fits, cleaned up the spark plug wire. put it in torqued it to 22. it worked fine again

1 week ago this is winter remember. car seems like it is taking longer to start up. also started staling but only after going into nuetral while being on the highway. city driving didn't cause any kind of idle problems or stalling. i looked into it and couldn't find many answers but i figured it's not that bad of a problem to deal with for now. right when i got home an engine light came one. been driving it lightly waiting to get this code checked out, no real problems besides the ones already mentioned.

until this morning when i started it up. took longer than normal and seemed to start rough. the engine lights started blinking almost immediatly. i took the car down the street and back and it just kept blinking over and over. engine wasn't hot enough to have idle problems but huffing and puffing from muffler. i looked under the hood to smell a wierd rubber burning smell. also what seemed like a knocking sound. the knocking sounded like it was coming from somewhere else to the right of the engine but i couldn't be completely sure. i always check oil level before starting car and it was fine. all other things seemed fine. i turned the car off, took out the spark plug wires, the one that had the leak seems to have some water condensation on it, the rest seem perfectly fine.

it's condition right now. i checked the tightness of the head cover because i heard you should retorque it after 1000 miles. i ended up breaking the screw inside of it apparently at only 12 torque. i unscrewed the rest and took the head off again and found oil under the head valve cover i just put on as if it may not have been tight enough, mostly around the screw that broke. also i should mention that the head cover seemed like it was leaking oil slowly since i got it 14 months ago. i put in about a quart of oil every thousand miles.

 

I suggest clean the IACV, remove the valve cover replace the bolt and adjust the valves, then put on a new set of spark wires (OEM not aftermarket). The valve cover does not need to be very tight and as you have found, the bolts are easy to break. (spec may be in inch lbs not ft lbs). A little oil in getting into the spark plug tubes will not hurt anything.

 

thankyou. update1/21/15. fixed the broken screw. i took out all of my spark plugs, the 3 i never touched before seemed pretty loose. the spark side was all white, which is heard signified the engine is burning to hot. the weird thing is the spark plug that i did take out used to be white but is now black. what could this mean?

also i noticed 2 out of 4 of them have oil on the screw part. i can post pics if it will help. i looked inside of the spark plug holes and there is oil sitting right inside where the spark plug should be only on the one that turned black.