As stated the valve stem seals had pretty much given up the ghost and were letting copious amounts of oil into the combustion chamber.....which made for a fantastic smoke screen on start-up!
Actually now that I think about it, the above photos were taken after the full rebuild that ensued.
Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the engine build....actually I don't have any engine bay photos from this era at all!
So you'll have to imagine how the MA looked with a 34ADM Weber carby from a Ford XE Falcon, a Lynx foam filter, 4 into 1 Pacemaker headers and an electronic distributor from a HB series Mazda 929. Internally the whole rotating assembly was balanced (clutch to front pulley), the compression left at a massive 8.6:1
, a bit of head porting and polishing, topped off with a 30/70 camshaft regrind. All this culminated in a huge 85 rwhp at 5,500rpm!!!
Not bad considering the series 2 626 MA 2 litre only generated 75 fwhp in factory form.
This engine served me well for a couple of years.....then one very late night upon return from Willowbank Raceway (Summernationals)....New Years 1994 IIRC.....I was cruising along South Pine Road at Everton Park (right outside the Primary school at the top of the hill for those of you who know the area)...when there was this almighty bang and the engine just cut out
....then no starty!
. So it's 1am and this was back in the day before everyone had mobile phones. I had no idea where the closest public phone was, so what did I do? I locked the car up...not as though it was going anywhere in a hurry
.....and started running to a mates place at McDowall some 3km away to call my parents to bring the family car (1981 Ford XD Falcon) and a rope! After gingerly towing it near 10 kilometres back to Albany Creek we put it under the house and closed the garage door....by this time it was after 3am in the middle of Summer so the sun was due to rise in under 2 hours.
The next morning a few of my uni mates came round to help me diagnose what had failed. First we checked for spark....yup all good....second we checked for fuel....yup all good....third we checked that the carby was clear ie. getting air. We cranked the engine and got a couple of kicks but still no go. So we pumped the accelerator pedal a few times to get plenty of fuel in....then cranked her again....when all of a sudden there was this explosion...the engine oil dipstick shot up out of the engine bay and hit the floor above!
There was something very wrong.....so off with its head! After pulling the cam cover off it was immediately clear what had happened...I can't remember exactly which valve of which cylinder had a cracked valve spring but this loss of tension released the valve collets sending the valve on a one way trip into the combustion chamber. I'm sure you can all imagine the destruction that ensued. One f'ing big hole in the crown of a piston and a well and truly minced head caused by the remnants of the valve head bouncing around. I still have the head of the valve which I fished out of the sump and the piston and rod buried in the shed somewhere as a memento of the last piston engine that was to reside between the chassis rails of the 626
.
[edit] - Piccie of broken bits added!
Stay tuned for part 3.
There will be lots of piccies to come.
Cheers,
Danny
A friend of my fathers had a wholesale car yard and had just taken delivery of a one owner 1982 Mazda 626 Super Deluxe with a meagre 110,000km on the clock. Being a super deluxe it was a five speed and had air-conditioning. 
