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Firstly, don't beat yourself up about these things. I know that is easier said than done. You have continued on and not given up.
Parts wise (and car wise) prices are have really shot up. When a UK damaged car or scrap car can be bought at COPART taken to Eastern Europe and parts shipped back here. But weak pound etc and shortage of parts.
Stay safe. Bon chance.
lynx
MX5 update:
The oil pump disintegrated sending bits of soft metal all around the oil system which obviously fucked everything and there was no point trying to fix it. In case this question ever comes up in your future, if you remove the a/c from an MX5 engine, one of the bolts that goes into the bracket that comes off, needs to be replaced with a shorter bolt. It's not surplus to requirements. You can see where this is going...
That bolt is one of the main bolts that holds the oil pump to the block, hence the issue above. It was a complete oversight and it's extremely frustrating that a simple mistake like that caused such a catastrophic failure. I can't call it bad luck, but it's certainly been a long fucking run of things going wrong.
So I've got another engine and had to pay 3x what I paid last time, everything is getting harder to find and more expensive. While the internal combustion part of the engine is in good health (thankfully), everything else was tired, filthy, and rusty, so we're replacing every seal and gasket, cleaning up coolant pipes and housings, where necessary they've been taken off the old engine and put on the new one.
The new engine is almost fully re-assembled, and the old one is fully stripped ready to come out of the engine bay, so hoping the job will be finished this weekend, ready for Llandow the weekend after.