Reply to "No Smoke - Yet ..."

JB
Good things for me to test

In answer to your questions...
1 & 2 - Ammeter got scorched last year, the needle turned brown and is stuck at '75' with the engine on or off - so right now it is just acting as a hole filler and passing voltage straight across ... you've got me wondering if I should just pop it out splice the wires and leave the hole open for a while so I can reach in and feel them for temperature until I'm comfortable there's no problem, then drop a voltmeter in the spot in a couple of weeks.

As for #3 - yes, it's an MSD system (installed before I bought the car), I believe there's a tach adapter, but I haven't cataloged and looked up all of the stuff that's on the car yet (I'll make this a priority) - {UPDATE: yes, it has an MSD Tach Adaptor}

As for intermittent ground, that's a possibility, the accessory jack is not hooked up, so the wires for it are somewhere in the dash and maybe bouncing around and drawing down the battery one day, and not another {UPDATE: There's a cluster of purple wires just sitting there disconnected as well, I'll dig further into the rats next over the next few days}. Also, I put in a remote RC kill switch on the battery (black box that mounts to the positive terminal and when I hit a switch on the keyring, it disconnects the battery), if something inside that was damaged last year during the high current situation that boiled the battery, maybe it's causing a problem ... Out it comes!

I have a digital voltmeter that I should be able to jury rig directly off the battery so I can watch it while driving - good idea.

Thanks!