Today, I wanted to have a go at starting the engine - which meant doing a bit more wiring. So, the first thing was to find my spade terminals.

Somewhere, I've got a gazillion of them (well, around 200) - but could I find them? No. I'd tidied up a bit a couple of weeks ago, and I bet they've ended up in a box. Anyway, after an hour and a half, I gave up (I couldn't even find a single spare one) and used some bullet connectors instead (I don't like them, but they'll do in a squeeze).

So, I connected the fuel pump, fuel pump supply and main ECU supply using these connectors, and had to work out which of the pins I had to use on the throttle position sender.

The Bentley guide has at least 6 different throttle body connector wiring diagrams - but it was after I'd reviewed 4 of them, I remembered that I had bought one from an AEG engine code, so I looked that one up. This was actually pretty much as I had it wired up, except one of the positions didn't seem to work - but the other one did, so I used that instead. This took quite a while too.

The water temperature sender was another thing that needed to be wired up, so I did that like the throttle position sensor:

And then, I checked each of the inputs to the MBE before connecting it - it looked good. So, I put 2.5 litres of petrol in, connected the MBE, and started it up.

And it didn't do anything. After a quick call to John, I checked the plugs - they were sparking. I then checked that fuel was getting to the engine - and it wasn't. So, I put the other 2.5 litres, and tried again. It was a bit better, but didn't want to kick. Thinking that there wasn't enough petrol, I siphoned some out from the Mondeo and put that in. I also jacked the front of the car up. However, it didn't help. Here's a video of it trying to start:

Now, I had taken a few short-cuts. I hadn't plumbed the turbo in, and the air temperature sensor wasn't connected (neither was the map nor the lambda sensor - but I'd been told that these were only required when you were mapping it with the MBE). I'd also not wired any of the MBE output sensors (tacho gauge, low oil pressure [the other end was connected though] and radiator fan relay output).

So, I'm going to get the MBE connection cable so I can use my laptop to see what it's doing. I did take one of the plugs after it, and it was soaking in petrol, so it could be a problem with the injectors. In retrospect, I should've measured the resistance of the air temperature sender, and just popped a resistor into the connector to give it some kind of signal (I've got stack loads of them).