Success!!!

I was finally able to start the car for the first time last week. Sat down, key in hand, took a couple deep breaths, and fired it up. Started on the 1st try. It smoked horribly to burn off all the extra oil / assembly lube / never sieze. Poor Riley said the car scared her, because it was making so much "Spooky Sauce".

Once the car was warmed up, I started looking UNDER the car, and saw a good sized puddle of oil on the left side of the engine. I poured over the shop manual a bit, and realized that there's only one oil fitting anywhere near the puddle, but that there was no way I could get to it that night.

Next evening, I pulled the PS pump back off, managed to get a stubby wrench on the fitting, and sure enough it was still loose. I remember now that I had torqued it down at least three times during assembly, only to find one more wire / vaccum line / etc that had to be routed under the hard-pipe, so I decided I might as well just finger tighten it until I was sure I wouldn't be removing it any more...then completely forgot about it.

I picked up a transit permit for Monday and Tuesday earlier this week, and managed to drive almost 150 miles, including a failed trip to the emissions test. Hopefully Saturday I'll be able to swap in the stock ECU and some new plugs, and give the test another try now that I'm on fresh gas.

I still have an issue with the cooling system not pulling water back in from the overflow bottle, so I'm going to have to replace the line from the bottle to the AST, and probably worth replacing the AST while I'm at it, but the important part is that the engine is back in the car, and runs!