'91 Mazda 626, engine rebuild needed?

[axe9]

Okay, well to start off, my sister owned this car before I, and drove it pretty hard. however, all and all, it's in great shape. needs some body work, etc.

A few weeks ago we were getting a lot of backfiring from it at start up (My sister still owned it). So my dad took off the spark plug wire from cylinder 3 I think. Anyhow, the backfiring stopped, and besides the obvious stuttering, it ran okay. so my dad told me that that cylinder had low pressure in it for a while, and that it SHOULD be replaced, but wasn't imminent. Then he said that it's probably backfiring because the spark plug is all junked up. Anyhow, we tried removing it for cleaning, and it wouldn't come out. At this point, we had only run the car for ABOUT 2 minutes. but the engine was still pretty hot. we let it cool down for like 20 minutes, and then tried again. this time, it came off. I think "YAY!" Then we looked at the spark plug, and it's missing the bottom half. everything after the threads. So we're wondering, where's the rest? my dad concluded that it has broken off inside the motor, and we need to pull the head. he doesn't have enough time to do it himself, so I bought the car from my sister after she bought a '99 Grand Am.

My dad says to fix the cylinder we need to pull out the whole engine, and do a complete rebuild, and replace gaskets and whatnot, in addition to pulling the head and having it resurfaced. So, I have two questions.

#1 Do I need to completely rebuild the engine and everything else to fix it?
#2 what's a good book for it, and what tools are needed.

thanks in advance,
Benjamin

[MazdaManiac1136]

ok i live in canada, im not sure where you live theses are availabe but a haynes manuals are very good for complete diagrams and fixes for most problems