Dash body not grounding out

hey all, I have a duster with some MAJOR electrical issues. I hooked up the amp gauge since I was replacing it and put the car back together. Once put back together I hooked up the battery and nothing worked. Turns out the dash does not ground out for some reason (checked with a multimeter and amp gauge showed 11.67V on both the positive and negative end) when I tried grounding out the dash with a wire, I got sparks. Any reason why this could be happening? Thanks

As others said, positive and negative of what? The Amp meter is not a load, do not short either to ground, as mentioned above. Likely the bulkhead connection needs “tightening”.