Kinda in a bind

Hey all. Where do I start. Being the idiot that I am, I decided to shorten all my wires for my aftermarket gauges and alarm because I had just ziptied them and let them be. Everything worrked great before. Now, my running lights do not work. No gauge backlight, no lights on my heater bezel, nothing. I put in a new cigarette lighter and i guessed at which wires were the correct ones since the original six under the console were all sliced off.
For shits and giggles, I took a voltometer to the rheostat connector behind the dash. I originally had spliced into those wires to get my gauges to turn on when I had my lights on. The one that I beleived to be positive in voltage was. So I tried the negative. I got a positive reading. I am now getting a ground on a different wire than I had before. Could this be due to hooking the lighter up wrong? If anyone could please send me the wire colors for the lighter connections, I would appreciate it. Thanks.

btw, any input on this would help..I drove home twice this week with no dash lights at all....not easy...

Take it all apart!!

There's going to be no answer for this. Don't guess when doing electrical work. Everyone should listen to that. Just go through and do one thing at a time. Apparently fuses must have blown, especially if you're getting reverse readings... which is just weird.

Take everything you did and disconnect it, and start from scratch. Only advice I can give. Work one thing out, and everything else will fall into place. Good luck buddy

That's the better part. No fuses blew, unless they are hidden somewhere....i cant figure it out!! :confused:

Take it all apart!!Take everything you did and disconnect it, and start from scratch. Only advice I can give. Work one thing out, and everything else will fall into place. Good luck buddy

I couldn't agree more!!!

Take this advice and just take everything that you've messed with apart and check everything before you hook anything up. Check voltage, when power is on when it is not, and check to see if grounds are all connect correctly. Try using a Voltmeter and my personal favorite tool, the test light. Good Luck