Can't clean install Yosemite to 3rd party SSD in 2008 MBP

Hi all.
I'm a longtime lurker, first time poster. I seem to have really stymied myself with trying to upgrade my ol' reliable MBP.
My machine:
Late 2008 15" MacBook Pro
2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo
4GB RAM (3rd party Crucial, 2 matching 2GB sticks - it originally shipped with 2 1GB sticks, I upgraded it around 2 years ago)
120GB SSD (3rd party OCZ Agility III, it originally shipped with a 500GB Hitachi HDD - I've just installed this and am trying to use it)
No optical drive (it broke years ago)
Here is what I've done so far:
Removed the 500GB HDD and inserted the 120GB SSD
Created a bootable USB stick with the Yosemite installer on it
Booted from said USB stick and used Disk Utility to format the SSD with a GUID partition table, with 1 HFS+ (Journaled) formatted partition
Begun the Yosemite installer
The progress bar crawled for about 3 hours until it got about halfway, then it failed out with an error. Unfortunately I stupidly don't have a copy of the error logs
Booted from the USB stick again
Now the SSD does not show up at all in Disk Utility and I am not given the option of it when attempting to install Yosemite - so I can't reformat the drive or attempt another install
I have tried to run the Apple Hardware Test (to see if there are any problems with the RAM that might have triggered the error installing Yosemite), but unfortunately this does not seem possible on my machine. Since it is a late 2008 model with no optical drive, from the research I've done there seems to be no way I can run it. It can't do an Internet Hardware Test, and the 'trick' of holding F2 during bootup won't work because apparently you need to have the original shipping OS installed. From memory this machine shipped with Leopard - the OS on my old 500GB HDD is Snow Leopard however.
Does anyone have any ideas for what I can do next here? My goal is simply to do a clean install of Yosemite onto my SSD. I'm at a bit of a loss, especially since the SSD isn't even showing up in Disk Utility now.
An additional detail: There isn't anything in the slot where the optical drive should be. 2 years ago I opened my machine and removed it, replacing it with a 2.5" 'optibay' drive caddy. Unfortunately it was a pretty cheap caddy and it never functioned properly, so I removed it before beginning the above process. There is just an empty space now inside the machine, since I threw away my old broken optical drive years ago. I don't know if this may also be causing problems.
Many thanks for any and all assistance!

Thanks for responding Leopardus.
I tried holding Cmd+R at startup last night, but unfortunately all I got is a flashing folder with a question mark on it, presumably indicating that it can't find any files.
Internet Recovery is unfortunately not possible on my computer, I believe this feature was only included with Macs that shipped with Lion or later versions of OS X (mine shipped with Leopard).
The problem in the thread that you linked seems a bit different to mine - I think the core issue for me is that the SSD is now not recognised at all by Disk Utility, meaning I cannot even format it to try installing again.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can access this 'invisible' SSD? I am considering buying a USB to SATA cable and connecting it to a friend's Mac.

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