It's ALIVE After a million, bazillion little details, I finally had a decent run of the transplanted engine last night! I ran it long enough for it to get warmed up, and verified that the cooling fan operates when I disconnect the sensor on the front of the cylinder head.

It ran pretty crappy at first, lots of oil smoke from all the stuff I put into the cylinders to keep it from seizing again, but once the lifters all pumped up, it settled down into a nice idle, about as smooth as you can expect from a 2.2L turbo, anyway!

I did not hear any turbocharger whistle when I revved it, however I'm not sure that it's set up to do that when it's running in Neutral.

Naturally, all the paint burned off the turbocharger and exhaust manifold while it was running, causing a bit of smoke and making me shut it down and restart it a few times just to make sure I wasn't about to have an actual fire. The engine restarted easily each time after I shut it down, so I think I've got a good one!

There's still a lot of stuff that needs to be sorted out. I have to:

• Resolve the issue I'm having with the gear selector not moving into Park from Reverse
• Try to figure out what happened to the heater control valve, and make sure there is vacuum going into the car to operate the blend doors. The heater control valve is called for in the vacuum diagram I have for the New Yorker, but I don't remember removing one from the car in the first place. It does look like there was a vacuum line teed off of the brake booster for one, however, so it might have been MIA from the very start.
• Get the transmission filled up once the gear selector issue is resolved.
• Figure out what to do about axle shafts. The ones that the guy who sold me the powertrain gave me have been damaged by a torch, like several other things that came with the engine. I can get used ones for $17.60 apiece from Parts Galore; I'm leaning toward that solution right now.
• Get replacement bushings for the anti-sway bar and reinstall it once the axle shafts are back in place.
  
• Get the hood reinstalled
• Put the under-dash area of the interior back together
• Figure out what became of the brake lamp wiring. Can't seem to find the plug under the dash that the pedal switch assembly attaches to. I might end up tracing the circuit from the fuse box to see where it went to.
• Put the steering column cover back together. The replacement ignition switch/tumbler assembly works perfectly, lucky score finding one at the salvage yard with the key in it. Now I'll have to have copies of the key made.
• Get the door lock tumblers changed out for the replacements I have. Since the car is now operable, theft becomes a concern.
• Install the radio I have for the car.
• Move on to the bodywork portion of the project. At a minimum, get the underbody damage aft of the front wheels repaired, fix the driver's front fender, fix the rust over the passenger rear wheel lip, various and sundry dent removal, find a solution for the rust in the bottom of the front door seams, fix the rusty quarter panel extensions aft of the rear wheels, and repaint. I'm really not too keen on taking the engine back out to change the color of the engine compartment, so I may just repaint it white. But we'll see.

Angela has been *very cool* about letting me take up a lot of time working on this lately, so it's time for some "me and her" time now. Probably won't have much in the way of progress for the rest of the week, at least.  ¶ Wednesday, March 22, 2006