Hey guys. Need some help plz. I am a amature DYIer.

My car is gathering soot on the back end which leads me to believe it's comming from my tail pipe. There is a fine layer of soot with little specks of larger particles. When I rub it on my fingers it is coal black like carbon. Does not feel or look oily or wet. I would take a picture but my car is the dark pearl black and it does not come out in the pictures.

I pulled the plugs (only thing I could think of doing) and they look ok to me. I did notice a little fresh oil on the top part of the plug (not on the part in the cylinder head but where the wrench would go. I think maybe those O-rings need to be replaced.) I included a picture of one plug (they all looked the same). One thing I did notice is when I took a flash light and shined it down into the cylinder I noticed a thin layer of carbon on the top of the piston. I also noticed very clean areas on the piston. Closest I can describe it was it looked like flaking paint. The Carbon looked to be very thin (like foil if that thick) but it is hard to tell looking down through a plug hole. Could the carbon flaking off the piston be doing this? The car just passed emissions back in Dec and has not been driven for 2 month due to being rear ended. HC was 105 out of 220. CO was 0.43 out of 1.20.
HC at speed was 202 out of 220 (kind of close but still ok). I just had a new cat /
resonator / muffler put in last summer. She does seem to run fin. Not burning any oil to speak of (maybe 1 quart ever 4k). The idle is about 900. When I step into it she smokes a little but I have been told from people behind me it is not a blue oil smoke but more like unburned fuel smoke (it looks pretty thin in my rear view mirror at night with car behind me). I cannot see the smoke during the day.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help guys.

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