It's a little behind our self imposed timeline, but then again getting right knows no timeline. We were able to get the 5.3 lit off for the first time today. This is where Larry's attention to detail pays off. His wiring and setup of the ECM calibration allowed it to fire up on the first twist of the key. Larry took a video with his Gopro that he'll probably post up later tonight. If I know him, he's back out in the garage right now cleaning up the wiring.
So I took a quick video with my phone when I cranked it up. It's loud without the exhaust, but it settled into a nice idle. Without further delay here's the quick video I took:
We really got a lot accomplished. The alternator wasn't charging so I had done some research on wiring the connector and found an issue. Larry had the bright idea to take the alternator back off and run over to autozone and get it tested since this one was never run and it came from and old co-worker at Workhorse. So I pulled it off and ran it over and it passed the test. I came back and put it back on and studied the schematics a little more. Turns out I got the pins reversed at the alternator. Swapped them around and tried it out and bingo it's charging. Other vitals on the electrical checked out, gauges started coming up and all the lights were working except the dash lighting. While Larry finalized the alternator wiring by looming it up I pulled the cluster out and figured out what I did wrong on the dash lighting. I checked for voltage with the lights on at the pin on the connector for the cluster and had power where I needed it. Turns out my LED bulbs were in backwards. Since LED bulbs are polarity sensitive I popped them out one by one and reversed them and they each came on.
Still got a lot of little stuff to do, but it was sweet hearing the 5.3 rumble to life for the first time in the Blazer. Major kudo's to Larry for busting his tail to get it this far. Watch for Larry to post the better quality video of the first fire.