After two long months of rebuilding and waiting for parts I finally got my engine back in the car yesterday. I used Rotary Resurrection's tips for priming the oil system etc. Then, on the second try it started! There were enormous plumes of white smoke, but it held idle almost immediately. Once the celebrating stopped, I commenced checking for leaks and looking for problems.

There is a check engine light #23, but more importantly the dash is not working. It works when the ignition is on the on position, but once the car is started the odometer is blacked out and out the gauges have bogus values. Even the aftermarket A/F gauge goes crazy. My guess is there is a problem with ground.

Any suggestions?

 

So there was a ground problem, ~ 30Ohms between the battery negative terminal and the engine (The driver's side engine harness ground wasn't making a good connection. That solved, the problem actually turned out to be a disconnected ECU connector under the dash. It was pretty far up there and I must have just missed it.