Hello everyone, I'm new here....was wondering if you Integra experts could help me out....

Car: 1988 Acura Integra Coupe 5-spd.

Yesterday on the way to work, my car started coughing and sputtering everytime I tried to accelerate at around 2000 rpms. The problem got worse, and after a while I could barely get going without revving it really high, then dropping the clutch.

Anyway, I pulled the sparkplugs, and one was covered in oil. So last night I changed the valve cover gasket, sparkplugs and wires for good measure. took it for about a half an hour test drive and it solved the problem, car felt even better than before (probably needed the plugs and wires anyway)...

Or so I thought. Today it ran normally for about 20 minutes, then it started doing this weird idle. Everytime I idled at a red light, it would rev between 800 and 1500 rpms. Uniformally, not erratically. It would start at 800, rev up to 1500, then drop right back to 800. This was about 3 second cycle. The car is driving perfectly normal except for this. I also have noticed a little more smoke out the tail pipe, but that might be because it has been extremely foggy and misty around here since yesterday.

Anyway, if anyone has any experience with this sort of problem, please help me out. It seems like too much of a coincidence for it not to have anything to do with the valve cover gasket I changed, but I can't think of how that would cause this problem.

One thing of note, the new NGK wires I got weren't the perfect size. #2 and #4 are a little short, so they're really tight on there. I don't know if this would have anything to do with it....

Thanks in advance for any help...