Trouble connecting Seeed Motor Shield without mounting

Hi I'm making an RC car that will track a color and keep its distance, right now i cant seem to use the Seeed Motor Shield V1 to control my 2 dc motors without mounting it, so I can't connect the ping sensor and cmucam4. I thought of using stackable headers but there were none at any radio shacks nearby or electronics stores i called, i ended up buying jumpers with header pins that should work but the LED's on the motor shield are dim and the motors won't spin. I am powering the Arduino(Mega 2560 R3) and motor shield separately and it doesn't work like this, but it works when mounted like a shield. From the site I would imagine that only pins 8-13 are needed. If anyone has any suggestions or has done this I would appreciate some help, I've tried searching on forum and google but didn't find anything.
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/motor-shield-p-913.html?cPath=132_134

edit: i don't know if this is the right section for this question, if not please let me know and i will move it.

Try connecting 5VDC and GND between Arduino and shield.

Thanks, I had tried it before but just to be sure i tried it again and it worked, so i might have a bad jumper, how would you suggest i hook up the ping sensor to arduino aswell

hey couldn't you use the digital pin like 5 or 6 and have a female connector that goes into the groove connector to that pin?