and sure enough my evening got burned up by a small fuse. Something must have went stray when I was doing the cluster retrofit. No tail lights and no dash lights - I was going insane, the fuses intended for those circuits were fine, little did I know there was another fuse on that board that serviced the tail lights. Here I am going crazy testing everything and that fuse was just sitting there laughing at me
oh well, back onto getting this oil sender to seal!