I found that had a tiny drip on my garage floor this past week near the back axle of my '01S. There were 4 spots by the passenger rear tire, and 1 spot near the driver rear tire.
I put it up on the lift on Sunday to investigate, and I found that the cylinder head was wet, on the pass. side, underneath the aft most sparkplug location. On the driver side, it looked like the leak was either the front or middle sparkplug area, the O2 sensor had caught one of the drips.
Funny thing is, it was dry last October (2011), when I decided to change out the plugs and tubes with new. My car had 90,000+ km on it, and I had bought it used in 2008.
I have Bosch plugs in there now, as well as 'Febi'/Bilstein tubes. The tubes I got (non-OEM) came with extra inner and outer seals. Today, I replaced the seals with the extras that came in the box. I lubed them with motor oil before putting them back in the engine. I do not have a pcar dealer near me, so I bought the replacement parts online from a non specific autoparts place.
Is the inside of the plug tube supposed to be bone dry? The ones I R/R'd today were a bit wet. A few drips of oil on the inside.
I'm wondering the wisdom of replacing the plug tubes as a maintenance item. It doesn't add a whole lot of time to a plug replacement, but if mine were dry when I did the plugs, maybe I should have just left them alone...How often do they fail?
Not a big deal, just wondering.
Peter