[alt63bird]

Saturday update:
Long story short - haven't checked the wire between the ignition and light switches yet, but visual inspection doesn't seem to show any melted wiring at the light or ignition switches. However I do realize I need to check for power from the battery to the light switch, and from the light switch to the ignition switch.

In order to repair the wire for the turn signal feed from the ignition switch, I decided to go ahead and drop the ignition switch to remove the orange/blue wire so I can repair the fuse pigtail on the workbench. And since the speedometer head was not clamped into place, plus the radio, speaker/grille, clock and glove box are currently out of the dash, I can get to the light switch and wiring through the opening for the speedometer head. But I couldn't get one of the two screws out to move the emergency brake bracket out of the way to make it easier to get to the ignition switch from the underside.

Since I already have a new ignition switch on the shelf, I thought I would swap it out and see if it takes care of the no-start/no-lights problem. Or so I thought - I pulled the key cylinder out of the old switch and went to insert it into the new one, but for some darn reason it won't drop in. When the key is aligned so that the pin at the top rear of the cylinder drops in order to slide the cylinder into the switch body, the tang in the back of the key cylinder appears to be 90-degrees out of phase with the corresponding slot in the new switch, and I can't get the key/cylinder to rotate to drop into the slot and seat the cylinder in the switch body. I must be doing something wrong here. Any thoughts?