Today was the day. After putting in about 50 hours in the last 8 days, I finally got to the point were we could attempt an engine start. There were a lot of prep tasks, like running fuel through the carb until it was clean and turning the prop with the starter to get oil into the pressure sensor. But, finally around 6:30pm, with the help of my brother, Bill, and his friend Howard, a Lancair driver, we fired it up. We decided, as a first test, we would see which was stronger, the new 180hp RV or my '86 4Runner. That's Howard tying the two together. (The 4runner won.)
Here's the engine running. If you look closely you can see the blur of the prop spinning. It started after only a few revolutions of the prop. The only issues we had were a few oil leaks and an unreponsive prop control. I've since read that you need to get the prop above 2000 rpm for the control to work. We only ran up to 1500 in this first test.
After an 11hr day at the hangar, it was Miller time.