It Runs!

I had been tentatively avoiding this challenge, just in the fear that it may not actually work...

Filling the coolant was pretty straightforward, some of the pipes were squeezed to try and get as much air out as possible during this process - and it's a great colour red/pink!

Filling the engine oil was as simple as filling engine oil can be, but attention must be paid to the start up process. In this process first fill the oil to a sensible level then crank the engine for oil pressure (I'll get to how to do this in a minute) and then start it briefly before re-checking the oil level and filling to the appropriate level.

Filling and bleeding the clutch was done quite easily; I thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the car pressing the pedals!

Filling and bleeding the brakes was more of a challenge; a couple of leaks were caught and careful attention must be paid to the process in the AG for best results. In the end we had a good feel to the brake pedal and no more air coming out.

With the fluids filled the battery was connected - which was momentarily quite frightening. It would appear that as soon as the battery is connected the fuel pump primes (takes about 2s) and we had no idea what it was at first! With the battery connected all the electrics were checked, with all the lights working, the heater and wipers working and (somewhat amusingly) the horn.

Picture following the start - having put the nose cone in place

As described above the process for starting consists of the following steps:

• Fill all fluids
• Cranking for oil pressure. The AG tells you to disconnect the inertia switch, but fails to explain what this looks like or where exactly it may be. I could not locate this mystery switch, but I could see a connector to where the pins went in for the spark plugs. I could not remove this connector, so I just removed the four connectors to each spark plug. Then crank the engine until oil pressure registers. 
• Re-connect spark plugs 
• Briefly start it, then check oil levels and top up appropriately. 
• Now you can start it for real - leave until temperature rises and the radiator etc start to get warm such that the cooling fan kicks in. 

Following these steps, remarkably it started straight away! It had a suitable idle speed just under 1000RPM and the ECU seemed to "learn" as it continued to idle and it became more stable - it also sounded great! Following the start the coolant needed to be topped up again.

Unfortunately the nose cone seems about 2" too wide for the car