[GMCNUT]

Hey guys - I have a weird situation. My 64 2500 series had a bad gas guage so I decided to remove it yesterday and replace it with another one I removed from a spare cluster. To get the dash out, I had to unhook the two large guage wires coming to the aftermarket Ammeter that was put into my cluster back in the 60's. When I disconnected these two wires the insulation was so old it just broke and fell into the floorboard in a million little pieces - revealing the bare twisted copper which would cause a major problem, so I decided to replace these large wires and remove them entirely from the truck for the time being. So I disconnected the positive terminal on the battery, and proceeded to remove these wires. Once pulled back through the firewall, I went to see where they were attached, and one of them went to the positive post on the starter, and the other was attached to the voltage regulator wiring coming down the pass side inner fender to the starter - it was attached in a big bundle of tape on these wires so I simply snipped it off a couple inches from the taped area and did the same for the one going to the starter. I capped the two short remaining wires w/ wire nuts for the time being. So I completed the re-install of the dash cluster with nothing else messed with aside from this ammeter wiring removal, and re-connected the newly cleaned cable terminal to the also cleaned pos terminal on the battery and hit the ignition switch. Dead. pulled on the headlights and nothing. No power to the dash or ignition. Since the ammeter was aftermarket and added I cannot imagine what in the world that could have to do with the trucks ability to start - does anyone have a hypothesis to share as to why removing the ammeter wiring would have caused this? The only other wiring messed with was the unplugging and replugging of the main harness behind the cluster, and I made sure to re-plug it correctly and not in any different clockwise or counterclockwise position. Aside from that I cannot imagine why this truck is not getting power. I have not tried crossing out the starter with a screwdriver to see if power from the battery is getting to the starter yet, but I feel quite sure it is since the battery is known to be hot and was absolutely working perfectly prior to this guage service project....anyone got ideas on this?