After connecting the battery, I turned the key, and to my delight, the gauge cluster turned on. I took a minute to sit down and soak it in.  It really gave me the jump start I needed to get back in to this project and really make some progress.  Now it's just the time consuming matter of extending the rest of the harness and testing to make sure every function works.

After studying the harness layout for a while, I decided it would be best to house the harness inside the dashboard and extend select wires to the engine components versus having the harness wrapped around the engine and extending ignition controls and speedometer/rpm signals inside the cabin. This should also give me a nice clean look in the engine bay.

With the motor in place, I began making some crude motor mounts. I used whatever metal I had laying around (chin up bar, old bed frame, jack handle). I'll have to see how they hold up, but I figured I could easily redesign later or perhaps just reinforce these and clean them up a bit.