It’s got no power???

See if you have any blown fuses. Check the battery terminals to make sure they’re tight.

Most likely a ground issue. Get the car on jack stands for safety and crawl under the car from the front to the back looking for the ground straps. There may be more than one. Don't just do a visual check of them you'll want to touch them and move them around to make sure they have degraded to the point they aren't providing a good ground.

The other issue could be in the fuse panel but that is less likely because you don't usually use the same fuse for the lights and the fuel pump; but you never know.

Fuses are all good and battery terminals are tight.  I’ll jack it up and see if I can find the grounds.  Any hints on location?

Key switch, hidden fuse (?) or bad relay. Carey will help you out.

Usually the battery ground goes to a clean place (no paint/rust) on the chassis near the battery.  There is at least one other ground from engine/transmission to another point on the chassis.  Since the body is fiberglass - there is usually another ground point up under the dash for instrument grounding.  You could take a pair of jumper cables - and set up additional grounds to test.  Run one from negative battery terminal to a clean spot on chassis.  An use another cable from point on engine to chassis (or if cable is long enough from battery negative to the engine/trans case or starter mounting bolt.

Exactly ! Jumper cables - additional grounds to test one from neg battery terminal to a clean spot on chassis.  An use another cable from point on engine to chassis (or if cable is long enough from battery negative to the engine/trans case or starter mounting bolt.

Speaking of jumper cables, that's where I'd start first.  Good ol jumper cables from one battery to the speedster's  --  connected post to post.  You say you "checked the battery and its holding a charge", which I presume means you tested the battery with a voltmeter and it came up better than 12V.  But just because it measures the voltage doesn't mean there are any amps behind it.

Jumper cable the two batteries post to post.  If it starts, its the speedster battery.  If it doesn't start, then remove the negative jumper from the speedster battery and attach it to ground on the speedster.  If it starts, then question the ground connection between the speedster battery and its ground.

(If it still doesn't start, it probably isn't the battery or the battery ground.  At that point I'd lean towards electrical circuitry.  And since nothing works, I'd see if I have 12V at the fuse panel. Before your get into that,  your beautiful driving day is over and you might as well wait for the call from Carey.)

The battery is only a couple of years old, but . . .  you know.  Try the easiest thing first, and positively rule-out what it is Not.  On the other hand you might get lucky on the first swing and salvage a few hours of driving today.

Remove battery terminals and clean them and the battery posts with a battery brush. Then go from there. No toolbox is complete without a battery brush.

Most definitely check for a blown fuse to the ECU.  I had that happen to me.  It's probably a 25A.  Mine seems to have been fluke, but after discussion we replaced it with a 30A, which I am assured is safe.

Still no luck.  I’ve checked all the fuses in the box in the first picture.  I’ve also included a picture of the back of the ignition switch.  Thanks tried jumpstarting with another car.  I also tried to connect a jumper cable from the negative terminal of the battery to the chassis.  The last photo is where the wire from the negative terminal attaches to the transmission.  The wire from the positive terminal attaches to this other mechanism.  All of the connections seem solid.  No matter what be tried, there doesn’t seem to be any power.  Dash lights don’t even flicker and headlights don’t either.  I can’t seem to figure out where a ground wire would be mixed into the birds nest of wires behind the dash.  Any other ideas?  I really appreciate the ideas so far.  

This might be a stupid question but do you know if your car has a main kill switch from you battery? May be it got bumped into the off position

I was thinking of that, too.  Look up under the dash or someplace in the Frunk (front trunk) to see if there is a switch somewhere, maybe/probably red.

It may be a fusible link that’s blown. By hooking the battery and checking the harness with a tester at different points flowing away from the battery, you will determine where the flow of electricity stops. The fusible link will be at that point, or at least that’s where the failure of flow will be isolated. Is there power to fuses? Does the power lead  to switches and gauges?

Are you using a key switch or key fob?  If key fob, try replacing the battery, or disabling the fob.

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@Stuman , in your photo of the back of the ignition switch, it looks like a wire is missing from one of the terminals - or at least the nut that should secure that wire (indicated by the yellow arrow, here). It's a little hard to tell if what's on that terminal is a ring connector (with a wire attached) or just a washer.

I think, on most switches of that design, the raised terminal is what's energized when the switch is turned to 'start'. That terminal would then be connected to the solenoid on your starter motor.

If there ARE wires that have come loose under the dash, it's a very good idea to disconnect the ground terminal from the battery before you start poking around. Also, look around on the floor of the car for the nut that would have been on that terminal.

A wire coming loose from that terminal probably wouldn't explain why all the rest of your electrics are out, but power to the fusebox is often routed through another terminal on that switch (out of sight in the photo). so maybe other wires have come loose there, too.

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Thank you all for the advice.  I have raised the white flag at this point.  I will wait to hear from Carey this week and will update this post with the final solution.  

Most people on the forum have completely different type of wiring than your car and their advise only pertains to old VW style wiring.  Your car has a modern harness with power relays and your ignition switch carries no load.

When you say you have no lights, do you mean no dash lights when you turn the key or no headlights or what?  There is only one wire that would effect every system in the car, so if you have no power to anything at all then we can trace that back to a single wire and connector.  Iff the main power fuse blows then it will kill the engine and related components, but headlights, flashers, etc will still work.

Problem Solved!!  After a full week of searching with the extensive help from Carey and Mike at Special Edition, we were able to isolate the problem to a single wire weather  pack connection that connected the power line from the starter to the fuse block right as it came out of the sidewall.  Somehow it shorted out and melted inside the connector but looked fine from the outside.   I didn’t have a whole lot of wire to work with or room under the dash, but I was able to excise the bad connector and splice in a small segment of 10 gauge wire with a couple of waterproof heat shrink butt connectors.  I didn’t have enough room to solder anything, but this seemed solid.  I included some pictures of the bad connector before removing, the inside of the connector and then the completed repair.

I cannot say enough good things about the guys at Special Edition.  They are always available when needed and willing to do whatever they could to help a guy as mechanically challenged as me work out this issue. No other business has customer service like this.

WooHoo!!! Good deal. I love it when a plan comes together.

Any idea what made it short out? It’s not like it could ground out on the body.

Looks like the inners of the plug got bent and were not making a good connection, which created resistance/heat, which allowed the plastic to reshape and make the connection worse, cycle repeats until no connection is present.  Not enough draw to blow a 20A fuse, so  it likely happened slowly.

One side note that everyone can learn from: a full and complete description of the issue is what made this solvable over the 'net.  As you can imagine, troubleshooting a wiring issue remotely can be impossible,  but simply by us knowing exactly what accessories did not work, it allowed us to find the single common power source for said items and trace it back to the problem with a simple 12v test light and some instruction to a willing owner.

And once again, superlative knowledge AND customer service!

Kudos, Carey!

^^^What Danny said X2^^^ You don't often find someone helping a customer like that after the fact.  And brilliant sleuthing Carey!

^^^What Danny said X3^^^

I have personally benefitted from Carey's and Mike's support on numerous occasions on both cars.  I cannot imagine owning a specialty car like the Coupe without someone like them to fall back on, if only to tell me to calm down and that the problem is a simple one.

That's a weird one.  Especially because it looked fine from the outside - REALLY hard to diagnose and find so Kudos to Special Edition and Stu.....   Job well done!

Gonna have to start calling him "Mr. Hines".

Or maybe just "Sparks".