As someone who has suffered under difficult to diagnose, yet relatively simple to fix, electrical problems - I feel your pain.

If I follow the various posts - you lost all power, but have somehow managed to restore some power from your battery to your dome light. But, the car will not crank, even when you have the system hooked up to an external battery.

Follow Ron Kwas' suggestions. He has considerable knowledge and skill to match his short temper/impatience when you do not following his advice.


The first time my AMP light came on, an important nut had vibrated off my alternator...

The last time my AMP light came on my #1 fuse was out (I shorted out my fan switch at the dashboard - which kills the fuse EVERY time. I switched it with a "good" one, but it did no good at all. Turns out that it looked "good" but did not function. The temporary fix for that problem is a couple aligator clips and an inline blade fuse from the autoparts store. You attach the clips to each side of inline fuse wires and then clip it to the either side of the suspect fuse. This jumps the shorty fuse and puts a cheaper/available fuse at risk instead. I always keep this thing in my car in case I blow something and can't find the correct fuse.

However... the #1 fuse does *NOT* disable the starter. When I blew #1, the car started up fine, but I had no lights, no signals and no fan. Your starter problem is something else.

#1. Remove/clean/reattach the ground strap (it's on the passenger side of the engine compartment bolted from the bellhousing to the body down by the exhaust pipe). a corroded, partially broken, or otherwise bad ground will cause all sort of weird behavior.

#2 Use a multimeter and test the voltage at the other end of the big red wire that runs to your starter. Confirm that power is getting to starter. Depending on mods to the car, the big wire might run behind your engine block instead of over the heater fan box. If it runs behind the head, it is at risk of heat damage or breakage.

#3 Check the condition of the wiring on your ignition switch (under the dash). The dome lights and headlights are the systems that work even if you don't have the ignition at KPII. So if your ignition wiring is at fault, then the dome light might work, even if the rest of the car doesn't.

#4 ABSOLUTELY look over the car's wiring diagram. If you don't have a Haynes manual, there are a couple online (GCP.se, maybe sw-em.com) or one of us could send you the page. I didn't think I could read one, but the 122 is surprisingly easy to understand and will show you how everything should be connected.

Good luck.