I decided this week that my main focus would be to get the engine started. Largely spurred on by the coolant staying in the pipework!

I started the week off by filling the engine and gearbox with oil. It’s quite difficult to see on the dipstick when the oil is fresh and there’s no dirty oil in the system to contaminate it! With that done I investigated the problem with the headlights. Nice and simple – I hadn’t attached the relay to the sidelight switch wire. Traced it back, found a suitable place to splice it in and all was good.

Tuesday’s tasks were to extend the MAF wiring and fit the battery. No problems encountered – I use the aluminium tray that Westfield supply mixed with the fixings from the MX5.

Could be prettier, may have to break the black rattle can out!

Yesterdays task was to fit the exhaust and put the drivers seat back in. So, I started drilling the hole for the rear bracket, sliding the spacer in and bolting together the fixing. A bit more orange dust later and…

Then I fitted the strip the D clamp bolts onto the right way around. Then I fitted it the actual right way round!

I managed to persuade the silencer to fit onto the downpipe – took some going. Thought I was going to have to break out some sort of grease!

I suppose at this point I should mention that those aren’t the tools I was fitting the silencer with. No, those are the selection I decided I needed to tighten the drain plug and fill the gearbox with oil the other night.

Knowing how the IVA man is fond of the clamp on the front of the exhaust, I continued the exhaust wrap down to the silencer. I think it helps make it all look a bit less weedy to be honest.

Add the heatshield et voila. Maybe this could also be black!

Hopefully it’s back far enough to cover the rear clamp

Last job for the day, playing with the dash.

I’ve uploaded the standard westfield 2000 sport configuration for now, changing the coolant sensor settings to a standard bosch sensor. The resistance values of that are about right, but I’ll need to do some electrickery to change it to a voltage reading. There’s no point in configuring the oil pressure sensor as it’s just a switch on the Mazda. I need to work out if it’s normally on or off but if the value changes, I know something is up.