Here's my post from NECO, see if you can make any sense of this
Here's the situation, this could get confusing. I may have to try to take a video to show exactly whats going on if I can't describe this right.
I got in the car to come home from work tonight, and I started it up without problems. As I got ready to leave, it shut off. I restarted it, and it was running VERY rough, like it was cutting out. All the electrical stuff was flickering (gauges, dome light, etc), and it shut off again. Smoke started coming out the top of the gauge cluster. I called Royce over, and we suspected that one of the LED's that we put in had burned out or something. We ran back to my house real quick and grabbed the gauge cluster from his Cougar, and put it in mine real quick, as his hasn't been opened up or modded. But it still did the same thing, with smoke coming out the upper right side of the cluster.
Now here is where it gets REALLY confusing. As I was towing it home, I noticed something strange. When the E-brake was OFF, only the turn signals and high beam were illuminated, and very dimly at that. I was not hearing the fuel pump come on. The car wouldn't try to start, just clicking the relay. When I pulled the e-brake ON, all the lights lit up and I heard the fuel pump kick on, and the car would start and run, albeit flickering and running very rough (enough to get the car up my uphill driveway though). With it running, if I dropped the e-brake, the car would shut off along with most of the electrical on the dash.
I was suspicious of the recent custom wiring I have done, but it is run 100% independent of the rest of the car and has a "master" kill switch for all accessories. I even disconnected the power completely from the battery just to troubleshoot that, and it made no difference.
Get in car, e-brake ON. Turn key to ON. I hear fuel pump kick on, and I see this on the gauge cluster.
Display screens are illuminated, as are the 4 warning lights to the right. I get full signal of fuel level and coolant temp.
I let the e-brake OFF. Fuel pump power no goes OFF, LCD's shut off, , lose all signal for fuel level and coolant temp, and I get this on the dash.
Turn signals and high beam indicator are now ON. Pulling e-brake ON at this stage re-powers the fuel pump, and gauges come back on.
WTF, mate?
I've got one more "last ditch" thing to try, and if that doesn't fix it, I'm moving on to something else. I'm open to several options, depends on what I can find and who will finance me.