Charred Gunk in Exhaust Port???
 

What in sweet fancy moses is this stuff?

http://i.imgur.com/KUXsNdL.jpg?1

This charcoal looking stuff is rock hard, most prevalent near the front of the car and decreasing in severity as you move down the cylinders towards the rear of the car. This is the most extreme example is cylinder #1.

Is this a symptom of impending disaster, or just a side effect of air cooled oily goodness?

Kinda hard to tell from the picture. How thick is it?

How much oil is your car using? What do the plugs look like?

I would check the valve guides for wear.

My 2,5L motor that has 100K miles since its rebuild had a thin coating, maybe a mm or 2, of hard carbon. And my valve guides are shot.

Looks like coked oil from bad guides.

Yep that's what it is and bad valve guides is what causes it to happen

And I'll add that a can of Berryman B12 Chemtool in your gas tank will clean that stuff up in one tank of gas usage. Obviously it doesn't fix the actual problem but it does clean up the mess!

You saw Elaine's dancing recently? (I'm a Seinfeld addict, watch it all the time!)

Thanks everyone. Looking around I see that worn guides are a pretty common problem for the 3.2. I'll check the spark plugs today, but unless they are crazy bad I'll likely button it back up and drive it for 50k or so before a total rebuild/upgrade.

Thanks for the help!

Or the wife been driving the car? ;)

You should remember that when the guides get worn sufficiently to display such oil deposits, they are not cooling very well and this increases the chances of a failure.

Now THAT is far more expensive to repair than a normal valve job. :)

Thankfully me wifey can't drive a manual transmission http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1463671224.gif