if your car wont start you are looking in the wrong place. you should not take your valve cover off because now you will need to replace the seal but it does sound like it was a bad seal anyways. where you need to look is your distributer cap and rotor. follow your spark plug wires away from the spark plugs. you will find the cap. it will be held on by 3 screws. take that off and i bet it will be all coroded and burt up, it may have also cracked. the rotor is the thing in the middle that is still on the distributor. that is held on by 1 screw. change all that should cost about $35. now about your plug socket getting stuck. check your spark plug wire and see if any of the boot has melted if not you may have a large build up of burnt oil in that chamber.