Engine System Service Urgent, from bad to worse

[SVO LOU]

Well, had a nice little write-up then, when I went to submit it, BLAM, into the bit-bucket I guess.
Anyway, found two bare wires on the 6-wire harness that goes from the MAF sensor to the connector that sits on top of the transmission, where they run between the starter and the block. Fixed that and VOILA!!!

[abscate]

Yikes, what caused that damage?

[SVO LOU]

Yikes, what caused that damage?

It must've been from the harness loom being brittle and cracking and falling away, didn't see any melting of the insulation so I 'ass'ume the same happened to the wire insulation as it passed behind the starter.
I was just glad it didn't fry the ECU.

[jonesg]

What made you suspect the wire loom in that location, not the easiest to access.

[SVO LOU]

What made you suspect the wire loom in that location, not the easiest to access.

I knew the throttle pedal potentiometer was good, swapped it with another car and had the same problem. I then used vida and saw that throttle angle % and another metric I can't think of right now were both zero. The car ran fine but had a lot of throttle lag, I could actually floor the pedal and release it before you heard the RPM's raise. Not bad on the highway but a little tricky in traffic.

Not having a breakout box I pulled and checked pins on the ECU but everything looked fine. I then went to the MAF sensor and was going to re-seat the connector until I found out it was hard-wired into the sensor with the connector of it meeting the harness atop the transmission. Checked that plug and it looked fine so I back-tracked the harness since so much of the harness loom was brittle/non-existent and then I saw the bare wires.
So to answer your question, by accident really.