Who knows where the main grounds are for the interior electrical stuff?

I'm pretty sure they need to be cleaned up, voltage to all my dash components is always alot lower than at the alternator/battery. If I run too many things at once (headlights, blower) then use the turn signals when the car is warmed up it can die (dead, no dash lights, no starter click, nothing) if the voltage drops too much. Have to pull fuses (can't remember which) to get it to start.

My wiper relay was totally rusted, so obviously i've been getting some water in the pass compartment (likely through all the new holes I put in the firewall to haxxor LH2.2 in).

Ya ok, I'm rambling- where the heck do all the ground wires for the blower, dash lights, etc all end up??? If I have to tear my dash apart, fine, I'd just like to know what area to start tearing apart...

Main spots I remember are:

-around wiper stalk, at the steering column. At least a few are at one spot there.
-bottom front of the centre console, driver's side, there's a least four or five there. If you pull off the kick panel, you can see it tucked in behind the console cover.
-next to e-brake handle, driver's side, just under the carpet, there's a couple there.
-there's one ground right on the underside of the dash itself, but I believe that's just for the clock. Its at the centre towards the back of the underside.

That's all I can think of right now.

Have you verified that your voltage at the fuse panel is close to what is at the battery? If your dash gauge reads low but DVOM reads fine, it might be a ground. If you've lost more than about 1/2 volt at the fuse panel, though, it's probably the hot side you should be looking at.

Have you cleaned up the fuse panel? Scrubby scrubby with a fine wire brush and some 'Lectra Motive', as well as cleaning off the tarnish on the fuses?

Haven't cleaned the fuse panel recently, but voltages check out ok there anyway. Given the number of things I've messed around with on this car, i wouldn't be surprised if I've dislodged or muddled up some grounds somewhere.

with the lights, fan on max and rear defrost on, i might see 11-12v on the gauge (verified with multimeter, at any dash +) and ~14 at the battery. There *might* be 1/2V drop at the fuse panel, I'm sure cleaning it up will help there.

I'll check those areas Greg, as I said, I've done some kind of work in all of those spots. I've got a bunch that are on the top right side of the centre console, but I don't even know what they're for as everything (except maybe the blower motor) still worked with them disconnected.

I know the clock has it's own harness that connects to the back of the speedo so the one underside of the dash may be the culprit... I swear I looked/felt there though. Could be different on your older models too.

If you've verified that you've only got 11-12v at any dash plug, you've obviously got 2+ volts of drop before even taking a ground into consideration. Therefore you should look on the + side first.

ah good point.

now that I'm thinking about it, i can't remember how I did the testing exactly. Across terminals, or just the positive side with the multimeter on it's own ground...

Either way it should result in the same thing - the multimeter takes such a LOW draw by itself, a poor ground or faulty wiring won't show up. You've got to test it inline with the device: i.e., put a load on the circuit and see where the resistance (i.e. voltage drop) is.

but if it's a bad ground, and I hook up the meter to the power AND ground of, say, my voltage gauge, it should give a lower reading (the same as the gauge) than if I hook up the meter to the + of the gauge and clip the negative lead to a known good ground on the dash or directly to the chassis, right?

Not necessarily. Your multimeter has a resistance in the millions of ohms, so if that's the only thing on the circuit other than a resistance of 2-3 ohms in the bad ground, you'll never notice.

Put a load on the circuit by turning on a device, and then put one lead of the multimeter on the ground pin of the device and the other lead on a good ground, and that circuit has a bad ground if you read any voltage. Ditto for power - put one lead on the battery and the other lead on the fuse box, and you shouldn't see more than half a volt with everything turned on.