It runs!
It did it’s best to break my brain, but got there in the end.
Short version… I laid the CH Lancer loom into the the Mirage, and got some signs of life: the instrument cluster lit up, the blinkers worked, etc…
But it wouldn’t crank and it wouldn’t talk to the code reader. Lots of messing around followed, found a few missing earth connections, but still no joy.
Then I pulled the loom back out of the car and laid it out on the ground, and made super sure to connect all of the earths - don’t think that I found any new ones, but it cranked, and talked to the code reader.
So I hot wired the fuel pump … and it wouldn’t go. Getting fuel to the injectors, had spark, hmm… Took the spark plugs out and discovered that the plug wells were full of oil. Fitted the new rocker cover gasket, and double checked the cam timing in case the previous owner messed up the timing belt change (he hadn’t).
And still no go!?
Anyhow, I found that it wasn’t getting fuel to the rail anymore - but I could still hear the fuel pump?!
Oh… it ran out of fuel… so a few litres of petrol and away it went! ?
So right now the plan is to work out how much of the Lancer loom can be removed. If it needs the cluster then this is probably a dead end, but I am hopeful that I can pare the loom right back, and then fit it to the silver 2.4 Mirage. Obviously this also means that I will have to work out how to mount the drive by wire accelerator pedal, etc.
As an aside, the CH Lancer runs a non-return fuel rail. Lots of talk about having to change the pump or fuel rail for this conversion… but the pumps have the same part number, and the CH ECU does NOT do anything trickier than turn the pump on and off - no variable voltage or PWM or anything.