more then likely leakage from something....or a bad ground.....for example you can have the light switch turned on but no lights....reading the ground wire unhooked from the light you can get a lower then 12v reading on the wire as its also reading the resistance of the light bulb in the circuit.

If i were you i would start from the engine and work your way back.....first make sure you have a good battery connection at the starter and the feed wire going up to the main plug is also connected properly....then i would use the multi-meter to double check you have power at the plug pin....if all's good plug the boat side harness up and use a safety pin to pierce the jacket of the wire on the boat side and make sure you get 12v going out...that checks out go tot he ign switch and make sure you have 12v there....if that's all good and still no juice at the gauges when turned then more then likely its the switch itself. if not then continue down the line

and speaking of a hot mess....this is what my buddy once left me trying to "HELP" get the project moving along quicker before i arrived!!! :eek:

You need to stop. Start with the basics, one circuit, one problem at a time. You are all over the place, unsure about what you are doing etc. Slow down before you create more problems than you solve,

Neither the neutral safety switches or kill switch work that way. There is still power to the dash and the engine/starter will turn over.
Both only kill the ignition power to the engines. That is the way they are on my boat.

You can easily bypass the neutral switches. Just make some short wires with bullet connectors on both ends and connect the wires.

This is pretty much what I did. I dug deeper and saw that this really tiny connector had detached at it's base. First time through I did not notice this because there is a red and a red/black wire leading into what I suspect is the sensor and while the 2 wires were zip'd together, I did not notice that the 3rd pin had detached. To work around this I simply took the starboard neutral sensor and spliced them in with the portside neutral sensor reading.

So now the boat is usable but I will need to replace the neutral switch. This was mounted under and within the gear shift controls. Hope these livorsi parts are fairly easy to find and i'm a bit intimidated to start disconnecting throttle and gear cables so I can pull the whole 4 handle throttle and see how much disassembly of the gear shifter/gear control i'll need to do to get at the sensors. Hopefully is will not be that difficult.

Thanks guys for the tips!

My boat will not crank if the shifter is not in the neutral position. The engine will crank with the lanyard removed though.

Im not saying its how everyone does it, but when I wired my money pit, the red/yellow wire (starter) goes from ignition switch, thru neutral switch to starter and the purple wire (ignition) goes from the ignition switch thru the lanyard to the motor.

That's how exactly how mine are as well. Neutral safety switch only interrupts the starter solenoid circuit.

At least until I bypassed my neutral safety switch. I was going to put a hidden switch under the helm to bypass it as needed in case I get a stall in gear situation, but ended up just putting a warning label by the shifter that the boat can be started in gear, and not to attempt to shift it unless the engine is running or cranking.

That is actually what I meant to say.
Either way though, the gauges should still have power.