I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty sure I've never, ever complimented a girl on her shoes. In fact the only time I might notice her shoes is when she isn't wearing them, or they are FMBs. Generally the later would be followed by a seedy comment, though I've been told there are also "buy me a drink" boots for those girls who like to cock-tease. I'm not sure if the boots themselves are anything special, or if its just that they don't typically arc out angles greater than 15 degrees without at least 8 Smirnoff Black Ices being consumed by their owner.

So I've never really understood the obsession some girls (and some guys) have with shoes. I'm happy for them just to be comfortable and for them to get me into clubs as I require. If I'm not looking at your shoes, then clearly I don't care what you think of mine. Unfortunately, there has been some new policy changes at work regarding footwear. Steel caps, non-porous, non-slip soles all that shit. Seriously gay. Presumably some retard dropped a flask of acid on their foot. Nice one. Its a bit like skydivers wearing helmets, who are they kidding? The company was going to foot the bill, so to speak, we just had to pick a couple of pairs we liked. Huge choice of terribly uncomfortable shoes with no purpose except to protect toes from the actions of the clumsy person they are currently attached to. Steel caps though, seriously what age is this? Where are the carbon fibre mono-clogs? Why aren't Air Force Ones fashioned from 6061 aircraft alloy? Its an outrage. Probably.

The problem with steel caps is that they throw out the whole balance of your foot. Combined with the far too grippy sole results in those embarrassing incidents where in a moment of distraction you catch your toe half way through a step and lurch forward awkwardly. Probably carrying (and consequently dropping) a flask of live virus. Anyway, I had put off the whole shoe shopping thing for as long as possible as a silent protest at the stupidity of toe helmets. Eventually someone noticed and I got thrown in a car with a bunch of other stragglers, in this case my boss and 3 girls. Within about 90 seconds of arriving at the store my boss and I had located shoes that looked the least gay and test fitted them. About 2 hours later the girls had each decided on a colour, at least. Bored out of my mind and finding that saying "yes" to every shoe wasn't speeding things up at all, I wandered around the safety store thanking Allah that at least I didn't have to wear hi-vis clothing. Who'd want a job where you have to dress like a member of Devo just to avoid being hit by machinery or cars? Fuck that.

Speaking of safety hazards, on to the Pajero. The big plan was to get the animal running and maybe to a test run in a previously quiet local off-road area (next to a cemetery). However, like throwing a shoe at a Jack Johnson concert, a snag was hit.

Or rather, several. The loom was impossible to decypher, so we had planned to patch in from the ECU harness. The problem is its not just a matter of feeding it 12 volts and a ground. We had to try work out how to trick the ECU to start as the Magna it came from was automatic. The service manual wiring diagrams are fairly useless as they seem to assume that the Magna loom would only ever be found in a Magna. A bit short sighted of them. Not only that, the pin outs of the ECU were described in at most 5 letters despite them having an entire page width to fill. "N SW" for instance is the Park/Neutral switch signal feed to the ECU. Do you pull to ground or do you feed 12 volts? Fuck knows.

The second major problem was the induction piping. Mitsubishi in their infinite wisdom had apparently designed the induction piping to fill as much of the engine bay as possible. The air filter assembly is roughly the size of Daniel Thompson's head, and features small reservoirs of air or something on it for completely unknown reasons. They are these little tanks which plug in behind the air flow meter but don't appear to do anything except fill space. Thankfully, they can be removed but the whole air filter, air flow meter and 90 degree bend assembly is an animal to squeeze in anywhere. The most logical position behind the headlight was not an option as it fouled on everything. So, we went for the only place it would fit which was on the hot side of the motor in front of the brake master.

That required a run to Autobarn to pick up some intercooler piping, hose clamps and silicon adapters. On the drive back a heater hose in the Gemini exploded but with a car full of tools (as in spanners), hose (as in rubber tube) and every automotive fluid you could require for a drive to the shops it was fixed within 10 minutes. I've waited for longer at a set of traffic lights on Gympie Road. Formula One pit stops, pfft.

The induction pipe came together with the help of the flex pipe from a Ford Falcon and with a bit of welding of brackets was secured. It even clears the engine fan. We also needed to fit a custom radiator line as the thermostat housing is at the rear of the inlet manifold. This required about a meter and a half of hose, some recently "spare" exhaust pipe as joiners and some 90 degree bends to clear the distributor. The end result was surprisingly neat, I've seen worse attempts from factory. Actually, I haven't.

With that sorted, I got stuck into confusing the ECU into starting. I found an ignition line and wired up a fresh battery source and relay and set about connecting that to the ECU harness. Rather than inline splicing and soldering things, I just used those little clips that do it for you. It looks a bit on the rough side but it works. The next thing was to dial in the dizzy, which according to the service manual was the easiest thing in the world. Put the motor at TDC and dial the dizzy until it lines up with some mark. Done.

On a turn of the key (after fetching a fire extinguisher) nothing happened. The motor cranked but nothing fired. No engine check light. Nothing. So we spent the next 3 hours testing everything, from fuel pumps, to injectors, to air leaks and everything electrical. We could not find the issue at all, everything was as the service manual said (with a little bit of inference and extrapolation and imagination). Night fell, the elderly had their night caps and trundled off to bed, children were tucked in. Having been in a similar spot a bit under 12 months ago, I decided to ignore the service manual and advance the timing (as in spin the dizzy to be out of alignment). I dialled it to where I thought it would be centred and correct. I turned the key one last time before calling it a night. It fired up first time in a cloud of inconvenient truths. Loud as hell, but such a beautiful noise. The motor ran brilliantly, better than it ever did with a carby. After a bit of high fiving and several lung fulls (and hopefully upsetting the cranky bloke across the road) I turned the car off and pulled out the key. Satisfied at a job well done, or at least done. Except the car kept running - until I yanked the coil H/T lead.

The fucking irony.

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