Engine Started!

The problem of the stalling engine turned out to be fairly obvious; there is an air outlet at the back of the intake manifold that feeds the assisted brakes on the MX5. There is no equivalent on the Westfield, so this outlet needed to be blocked off. I'd overlooked it in my eagerness to get the engine running.

With that blocked off, the engine fired up easily coz air was being fed into the injectors and cylinders rather than widdling out into the engine bay. Sounds very much more imposing than it ought to due to the lack of exhaust pipe and silencer at the moment.

It is still not a complete success, the oil pressure is reading worryingly low; around 10-15 pounds per square inch (around 1 bar). It ought to be approaching 40 psi, and I don't fancy running the engine at under that - if that is in fact an accurate reading.

And the coolant fan from the MX5 doesn't work - it really had experienced an overheating problem at some point in the past.

The causes of low oil pressure could be an oil leak (which doesn't appear to be the case - exhaust is too clean, no puddles under the car, and coolant is still clear), a faulty pressure sensor, or possibly the oil filter causing a bottleneck (I had put on an OEM rather than Mazda filter), otherwise it is either a blockage or oil pump problem within the engine. If it is a blockage or the oil pump is knackered, it's bad news - the engine will have to come out and be taken to pieces in a fairly major way. Ugh.

I'll start off replacing the oil filter and pressure sensor - this still requires a slight disassembly due to the restricted space in the Westfield engine bay. And I'll have to replace the fan motor of course.

And there is still the flaky left hand indicator - I'm beginning to suspect the relay rather than the wiring, but investigations continue apace.