dade

dave, john thanks for the help. It probably is ps fluid. now that i know that isn't the cause of the problem, i need to track down why the car vibrates/jerks as it does haha

I'm fairly certain it is oil. it seems far too thick to be ps fluid. here is a pic, not sure it will shed much light on the problem, but you can see how atrociously grimy this engine is. it appears there is a mating surface about halfway down the hole, almost as if it's a 2 piece head. I can't figure out what it is. hopefully you can let me know haha.

it appears the spark plugs go through the side of the head from the top. the valve covers are below the spark plug holes

hey guys, any help is appreciated... the car is a 1997 subaru legacy 2.2L the problem is cylinder #1, there is oil just coating the outside of the spark plug and a little small puddle in the bottom of that hole. I'm not a subaru guy, but I am mechanically inclined. I can't for the life of me figure out where the oil is coming from. The threads of the spark plug are clean as well as the electrode, so the plug seems to be firing and possibly burning the oil if there is any on the bottom side of the plug anyway. this is my brother's car, and he said its been running rough so i figured we'd start with a tune up and i ran into this problem. he says it starts running very rough from about 40-65 mph and after that it is smooth. The rpm's don't change with the roughness, this may be a completely unrelated problem? EDIT: a few months back i replaced the knock sensor as the housing was cracked and it was showing up as a code when scanned. the car ran great for a couple months after, then began running rough again, and the code came back up. i read the knock sensor 101 post, and maybe the sensor isn't properly seated but i don't know why it would run fine for a while then go bad again. Thanks for any help!