no electrical after I removed the gauges, not sure why

[davidhilldallas]

On a 70 Challerger with Rallye gauges
I disconnected the battery over the weekend and removed the gauges and the 4 switches on the left side to fix some things. I got a different wiper switch I wanted to test, so I plugged that in and then connected the battery back to see if I could start and test the switch. Nothing happened. No dome light it on, all seems to be dead for some reason. Battery is new, a few weeks old and the charger/tester show it to be good...

Not sure if disconnecting the gauges and switch is the problem like a loop is not made??

Any ideas? Do I need to connect every back to get it to work??

[redo1973]

I'm not an expert here so others will have to confirm but I do suspect that you probably interrupted the ground in some way.  For instance, the wiper switch is grounded through the mounting bracket in the dash and must be grounded separately to test if not installed. I've learned that these cars are very sensitive to proper grounding. Unfortunately, I do not recall how the dome light ground worked.

[davidhilldallas]

got power back when I plug in the gauge regulator and the other connections including the DC gauge..

[70chall440]

He is right, a lot of things ground through the dash frame and most of your power to the dash (especially the gauges and some of the switches I believe) get their power from the instrument cluster voltage regulator, although I would have to review the wiring diagram to be positive. That said, I believe you proved this by plugging it in and getting power.