Well I would put the second stage on before the test except that I need to wind a second stage coil that would just "slide" onto the barrel. That would be so that I can experiment on coil length and coil position to achieve the optimal timing for acceleration. If I try to wind a coil tomorrow it would prevent me from giving it a try tomorrow night and I'm anxious to see some results. ;-)
Edit: small setback, I won't be ready until Monday evening to test.
Edit: so I was able to test it tonight at 2010uF, instead of the 1800uF I had earlier. It doesn't seem to be any more powerful with this configuration and I think that's because I have more ESR in the wiring of the capacitors. I should have put the capacitors closer together when I soldered everything up. I think that they produce a more powerful capacitor bank that way. Longer wiring does seem to create a slower pulse and therefore less power. I'm hesitant to change it right now because it works well and takes a lot of labor to get all of those caps in parallel into another configuration. I should have a pic up tomorrow night.