Alright. late night, and some level of shenanigans still afoot, but mostly things are getting there. it took a bit longer than I remembered to get the manifold and turbo all snugged up (that damn small housing and huge compressor cover makes for a snug fit), and there were some other smaller things that needed to take place as well, but explosions prevailed and the car runs.
I have misplaced my lower radiator hose (think it was just a shortened stock one), that's a large part of why I didn't have the radiator back in the car.. I took it and the intercooler out to swap the lower timing cover back on. I'm going to replace the tensioner with a new one, even though that one is probably fine, and I may flip the timing belt around to see if it'll start riding inboard instead of outboard. not sure what's up with that. it doesn't walk any further off the front, but I don't quite trust it, and it's simple enough to accomplish without all the stuff on the front of the engine yet.
In the video you see me try and crank it, and then go fiddle with things for a minute before it lights off.. I didn't verify that the relay for the fuel pump was being triggered by the ecu, turns out I had a jumper plugged in from back when I pumped the tank out in 2016. swapped that out, it came to life, and the results are obvious. No idea why it didn't want to idle, like I mentioned in the video I didn't log it, didn't look at anything, just wanted to hear it pop and fart. It's not far off though.
I did cheat a little bit, there was about 15 minutes of fiddling and cussing at the timing light involved in setting a ballpark tdc number, I had the plugs out and the turbo oil feed in a bucket, and got that close before trying to start it for real. the injectors weren't plugged in, in fact the only coil that was hooked up was #1. Gotta clean the terminals for the timing light I think, it kept flaking out and needing to be re-set.
still left on the to-do:
-radiator stuff (mostly just that lower hose), and intercooler stuff
-drain and fill the transmission, check into the drips.
-tars. Got to lookin' at the tires on the v8 car.. which are newer and simultaneously in worse shape than the ones previously on the gold car. may see what it's going to take to get some skinnies, but will also look into getting a set of general use tires mounted up on the black car's wheels (since those are the worst of the three sets), and just push off on the v8 wheels and tires for a while. Maybe do a monster burnout sometime with them, who knows.
-general tidying and tucking. it's funny, but I am looking forward to re-wiring the ecu in the wagon, the harness on the gold car isn't as bad as it looks (and it looks pretty bad), but there's a lot to be improved on and consolidated.
So far no obvious fuel leaks, one potential oil leak by the turbo (well, it's a leak, but it may be due to my not tightening the fitting all the way, we'll see), so all is looking good thus far.