Everything was ready for the first start. I made some final checks for fuel leaks and made sure all the electrical connections were tight and correct. With my old battery connected to boost the power I spun the engine over with the ECU off to get some oil around the engine as it had been sitting for a couple of months. Once I saw some oil pressure I switched on the ECU, calibrated the TPS via the menu and tried again. The engine was now turning slower as it was cold and the batteries were getting tired, but after 4 or 5 revolutions it caught and stuttered into lift with a slow idle. I was actually quite shocked. I had expected it to take some time adjusting the cranking pulse widths and the required fuel figure. Juggling things to get it to run before putting settings back and making changes where needed. As such, I had to go and find my balancing tool to set the TB’s relative to each other which smoothed the idle out massively. The next job was to get the fuelling level right and to adjust the throttle stop. My base starting map had far too much fuel in it, but as the guide instructed I adjusted the require fuel figure which was effectively like reducing the map. As I reduced the fuel I found I needed to back off the throttle stop as the engine was no longer being drowned with fuel. After a few cycles of this I got to a point where the fuelling was right, slightly on the rich side (which is normal for a TB set-up) and the TB’s were balanced. This had taken a few stop / starts to prevent the engine from overheating / upsetting the neighbours.
The important thing was that everything was working. The ECU functioned as it should and after some practice I had the hang of the tuning software. I felt confident that I could fine tune the settings quickly enough to bed the new cams in. It was time to pull half of the engine apart again.