Old gas

Update: Battery is severely discharged or shorted. Charger slowly cycled up to 15 amps, stabilized, then jittered back and forth a little, then click, the breaker in the charger tripped.

Disconnect the battery ground cable, and try a slow (low amperage) charge until the battery is fully charged. If the battery is full discharged, it may want more amperage than the charger can deliver on fast (high amperage) charge.

You need to check the discharge amperage.
- Battery full charged.
- Disconnect the interior light switch on the hatch lock (brown/white stripe wire).
- Everything in the car off.
- Doors closed for thirty minutes. Do not open them.
- Battery ground cable disconnected. Connect a good multimeter or Ammeter between the ground cable and a good, clean chassis/body ground. The target is 28-35 mA. Be sure that you are reading the correct Amperage level - miliAmps, as in 0.028 Amps, not 0.28 Amps or 2.8 Amps.

Your battery is probably around a 60 Amp-hour battery. A one-Amp draw will pull the battery too low to start the car in about 40 - 48 hours. A 30 mA draw will pull it down in one to two months. A 60 mA draw will pull it down in about three weeks...

"Easy" fix is a battery maintainer. Best fix is to find the current draw.

Well, it's been a while since I got to return to working on the car. Life continues to intrude on my hobby.
Anyway, my battery is fully charged and I've cleaned all the contacts for the speedo, etc. located in the battery box. Took the car out around the block, and no dice. still doesn't work. Anyone have any ideas where I might look next to find and remedy this issue?
While I'm here now, I want to say thanks to everyone, especially Wally, for all of your generous input!

I think when Wally suggested 'clean all of them', he likely meant all ground points not just those in the box. There are a couple bundles under the pod and above the CE fuse block that you can check. Seems like the latter might be in proximity to the mouse activity? Also might want to clean up connections at the 14-pin (see thread by Normy on this) connector on the pass fender in front of the crosspiece, hopefully covered by a plastic dripshield. Not sure that would relate to the instrument cluster issue- but prudent maintenance esp given existing problems.

Thanks, I'll give that a whirl and let you know how things go.

How old is this batt; has it been load tested?