Stone Cold Dead

[Buzz]

Well, it's a lot worse than I had hoped. After pulling the dash, I found power coming in to the ammeter acc. terminal through wire #27 from the starter but no power at the "batt." terminal which feeds wires 25, 39 and 41 connected to the starter, fusebox and alternator respectively. This indicated a fault in the ammeter itself which I bypassed by connecting #27 directly to 25, 39 and 41. Everything (except the ammeter, of course) seemed to come back on line and the car started up and idled beautifully. Since I had installed a new high volume water pump, I decided to let it idle for a while with the fans off to see how fast the temperature came up. Well, I soon realized that either the new pump was doing a mighty fine job or the temp gauge was not working. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter case and then when I turned the fans on, they ran for a second and stopped (manual - no thermostat switch). Wiggling the wire bundle connected to the fan switch got them going again but they would stop and start at the slightest touch of the wires. "Ok", I thought; What next? I turned on the headlights and the "tail" fuse in the box promptly sparked and blew leaving me with no taillights but brakelights and headlights work as well as turn signals and hazzards at all corners except the left rear. Horn, dash lights and tach are fine. My first guess (hope?) is maybe a damaged ground wire in the dash harness somewhere. I will try to trace the fault(s) tomorrow and let y'all (we say that down here too, you know) in on what I find. Time for a swim.