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Not a huge amount of progress lately, to be fair there isn’t a huge amount left to do aside from some little jobs. First one was to find a home for the USB/Comms ports for both the Motec and AIM Dash. There was just enough room in the centre console below the battery kill switches so I installed them there, plus it makes them very easy to access, although in truth I could have hidden the AIM dash port as it has built-in WIFI so I probably won’t need it that often. Also finally installed the dash with all the wiring now finally completed behind it. On the back of a little more research and talking to Tuner who’ll be mapping the car I decided it was probably best to add a fuel pressure sensor so I cut into the line just before the fuel rail and added a 150psi sensor. Handily the Motec has a 12 Pin Deutsch DTM breakout plug as part of the GT86 patch loom that is pinned out to accept the fuel pressure sensor, I put a 3pin DTM just the far side of the firewall as I’ve done with all the additional sensors just to aid quick removal, and then ran back to the passenger footwell where the breakout plug is located Last little wiring job was to fit a new 3Bar MAP sensor, as the OEM will be easily maxed out with the unrestricted Supercharger at the upper end. Once that lot was done it was down to the more mundane. First was filling the coolant system. I use a vacuum system for this as it gives the most reliable method of ensuring there is no air in the system. A quick little test showed the system was holding vaccum so in went the coolant. Final job was to prime the oil system. For the moment I want to leave the Accusump disconnected until I have the engine run in, I just don’t want the initial break-in oil going into the system In order to fully prime the engines oil pump and all the oil galleries I filled up the front housing ports via the oil filter housing, and then connected a 1.5L oil syringe to the top of the main oil gallery and forced about 1Ltr of oil through the system. I’ll do the same again immediately prior to first fire up too. So that’s about as far as I can go now until the engine is started up. There is a bit of a delay with my tuner at the moment for obvious reasons but I’m also just waiting on delivery of one final piece which I’m hopeful it will arrive in the next few weeks.

Been a while since I updated this, also cleared out a load of chat so hopefully people can post replies in here again. All in all, very slow progress. Matt and the team at Rogue Motorsport have had my engine for a few months and been nothing short of amazing. But as usual, it's been 1 step forward, 2 steps back... Originally, the block we had came back from the machine shop with pitting inside 3 of the bores. So was deemed scrap as it sat below the 1st oil ring. Another block was sourced, but was no good on the tolerances when we measured it up against the pistons. So I decided to stop trying to piece parts together and get ANOTHER complete engine. My 4th V8 in total! It was sold to me as only having 44k miles on it, and after stripping it down, that seemed to be true as everything inside looked brand new. Matt got measuring again and the internals that we'd already had balanced up were perfect fitment, so the bottom end is all looking good for once. Unfortunately, the work I had done on the heads was below par. The seats and valves had a lot of rough edges and it seems that the new guides are also not fitting properly for some reason. Waiting for Matt to give me a full breakdown when he gets a chance to go back into the workshop sometime next week, as Rogue have closed down during this quarantine period as many other businesses have. I'm the meantime, I've been researching the best setup for the VLAND headlights as I think they give the front end a much nicer look over the OEM lights. Only issue being, they are compatible with the OEM xenon setup, which means I need to swap over the OEM ballast and xenon system into the new VLAND headlights. After much deliberation, I decided I don't want to be left with just a shell of an OEM headlight, so I've opted for a separate xenon system specially designed for the GT86 with VLAND headlights. Coming all the way from Canada, I'll do a full write up on the system next week when it arrives. Test fitted the lights this morning to see how they look, and I'm very happy with the overall result and fitment! Gives the front end a more modern look with the black housing.