cylinder 1 misfire

[river]

today i was driving my car for about an hour and it was running fine as i could tell. so i park it for a couple hours and then go back out to drive it again, it runs fine for about 10 minutes, then at one stop light i notice it starting to idle funny. i put it in first and start to drive and then the car starts sputtering like crazy through all gears. at idle it seemed fine sometimes, i could give it gas and it didnt rev funny at all. then as soon as i put it in gear and started moving it would miss, sounding like the cat had gone out or something, although i knew it was an engine problem. massive power loss also along with some stalling. so i pull the car over and park it, shut it off and pop my hood. there is a light oil mist across the top of the engine, heaviest in the thermostat housing area. it looks like there is oil on the bottom of the block and transmission. it threw a CEL so i took it to a mechaninc/friend of mine and had him pull the code. it came up as cylinder 1 misfire. so i drove it off and parked it at my work for the night and started to look around in the engine bay. i pulled the upper intercooler piping off and i see oil through all the piping up top and into the intake manifold. i dont know exactly what the problem could be, any advice would be helpful. my friend suggested that it may be a spark plug and i plan on checking that tonight. if that does cure the misfire problem, then from the oil up in the piping i would think that i have another problem coming. in the past i have noticed that i have had white smoke puffs come out of my exhaust as some of you may remember reading about, and seemed my response was that it was the head gasket. my car does not overheat though, i dont loose coolant and my oil is free of coolant also. it does burn oil very slightly at times, depending on how im driving it. any ideas or is my description too confsusing?

 

[yoshimitsuspeed]

I think it is quite likely your problems are unrelated. There may be something I don't know of but I will tell you what I found through a simalar experience.
1. Have you run fuel injector cleaner through it lately and preferably on a regular basis. I try to do a flush every few months. 1 bottle of quality fuel injector cleaner (I prefer BG brand but it's not always easy to find and it's expensive, I have also heard good things and been quite happy with lucas FIJC) I also like to use an iso heat to get any water out of the fuel system(probably unrelated to your problem but good none the less). Your injector could have gotten some crud stuck in it causing it to run a cylinder out of fuel, or I have been told they can get stuck at WOT which is what I belive happened to me. I was at an autocross railing on it hard and when I came into the stop box a huge cloud of blue smoke passed me and the car started to stall. My mechanic friends belive the injector stuck in WOT mode and flodded the cylinder so bad enough gas thinned my oil enough it came back up past the rings and caused the smoke. Same code, missfire on whatever cylinder I think it was one as well. A few months later I started to have injector problems again which leads us to step number 2.
2. My injectors started cutting out completly but sporaticly. Your injectors could be dying but that wasn't the case with my car. For me it was the wireing leadig to the injector, it had worn through the sheathing and was arking on another wire.

Run fuel injector cleaner ind iso heat through, while the car is running wiggle the harness and all the wires as well as the clips that attach to the injectors if you hear it start to miss you may have found your problem. I was lucky enough to have mechanic friends who had two tools for testing injectors. They had one probe to make sure signal was actually getting to the injector, and one tool which told you if the injector was fireing. These didn't help me much but if you have trouble you might try to find someone who will let you use these tools.