Hey all

I bought an 87 coupe that had the crap beat out of it. somewhere along the lines, someone replaced the steering column with either a camaro column or something, but it certainly wasnt the right one. I purchased a column off of ebay, did the install, and now the car wont fire. This is most likely a VATS problem, but the kicker is that the resistor bypass that the previous person had made so that the incorrect column would let the car run, now shuts the car down. If I plug the VATS lead into the new column and try to start the car, the dash will come on but the engine wont turn over. this seems intuitively correct to using a key with the incorrect resistor. when I plug the old resistor bypass in, the dash will come on, but then I go to crank the engine, everything shuts down. no dash lights, no headlights, nothing. I have to disconnect the battery to get anything to come back on.

I took the ignition switch off of the old column and used the resistor bypass from the previous owner so the car shouldnt be "seeing" anything electrically different from before when it would fire up just fine.

Any suggestions?

thanks in advance