wrong plugs or wrong gap!
Yes, the valve cover gasket and the plug tube seals.
fuel filter clogged/water in system,wet or damaged ignition system wires,faulty or incorrectly gapped plugs, or vacuum leak at intake manifold or plenum.or vacuum hoses.
check the vacuum hose which goes to the MAP sensor, $4 part.
Plugs, wires, cap, rotor, air filter, pcv valve.
the spark plugs probably need to bee changed, happened to me and mine, cost about $100
Yes, the valve cover gasket and plug tube seals have failed.
The Malibu engine has several freeze plugs. They are on both sides of the block and designed to pop to keep the block from freezing.
You rock the engine forward to gain access to the rear plugs.
It is a 3.1 Liter V6, so it has 6 spark plugs.
To change the spark plugs on a 2000 Malibu, you need to get a spark plug socket with a u-joint in order to access the plugs on the firewall side of the engine. The plugs up front are easy to get at, and don't require anything special. Word of warning, if your Malibu has relitivley high mileage on it (80,000+) and it still has the factory plug wires, there is a good chance that they will break on you when you have to pry them off of the plugs, go ahead and replace the plug wires when you replace the plugs.
Remove the spark plug wires from your 2004 Chevy Malibu spark plugs. Remove the old spark plugs with a 5/8 deep well socket, by turning the socket to the left. Reverse the process to install the new spark plugs.
check cap and rotor..... check valve clearance "cold"