I've got an 81 camaro and im not getting any power inside the car. The radio, gauge lights, dome lights, and all exterior lights are not getting power. the gauges are working and the ignition switch but nothing else. I tried looking for a loose ground but havent found anything. thanks for any help

 

Fuses? How is the wiring going to/ from the starter?

 

Try running a separate temporary ground wire to the items you can ground like the radio and exterior lighting. Also use a 12v. test light to go from battery neg. to each power feed to see if it's getting 12v. power. If you get power there when connected to batt. neg., then check it to ground at the location to see if it's a local ground issue.

 

i forgot to mention i did check all the fuses and they were ok. everything worked fine when the car was parked a few years ago and I've been doing all kinds of work since then so not sure what went wrong. I'll go over it with a meter tomorrow. is there a seperate ground for the fuse block itself that could of came loose?

 

This sounds hauntingly familiar. Clean the batt connections and make sure you can trust your meter, here's why. I tore my car apart looking for a suspected bad bulkhead connection. I drove to the car wash, went to leave, got 2secs of crank and she went dead. batt was tight, got her home, found I had 12v power all the way to the bulkhead. The difference with mine was I had absolutely nothing in the car working, but, had an 8 to 10 volt drop at the fuse panel. In '79 GM ran a 10ga. wire to a 14ga. fusible link. this 14ga. wire supplies ALL the interior power, according to the wire diagram.( This wire or connection could be your culprit) I could not figure it out, all the connections were good, put it back together, still nothing. out of the blue my readings started changing, I look up and the dome lights on. Crank it, went dead, started cussing as I'm backtracking back to the batt (knowing now what the issue must be) none of my readings are consistent, I realized my meter was bad. After throwing it across the yard, I get a new meter and then I found the volt drop at the batt. The connection wasn't loose or corroded, I would have not suspected it if I had not seen the tiny black burn mark on the cable. I hate side post batteries. I hope this helps you.

 

I looked this morning briefly before going to work and I didn't find any loose grounds. I actually don't have the battery in the car I only had a top post laying around and have been using it with jumper cables to the battery cables as my main concern has been just getting the car running until i noticed the problem with my lights. Could that possibly be a problem? I haven't had time to go over the car with a volt meter yet due to a crazy work schedule

 

Uhh, yeah, that could be a concern. The battery really should be connected to the car better than that. Also, it needs to be a good battery, not one that been just laying around. At least get it checked out, make sure it's good first.