Electrical woes...horn, highbeams, stereo oh my! 95 240sx SE

[anthony_S14]

here is a description of what happened this past Friday after picking up my car from the shippers in Portsmouth, VA. After dealing with the shipping company for damaging my bumper (nearly ripped it off and caused the fender/bumper line to be misaligned), front license plate going missing, denting in my left rear quarter panel and magically applying new gouges and scratches throughout the car, it was time to make the 4 hour journey back to Jacksonville, NC with my wife following behind me. 30-45 minutes from destination I start to smell some sort of electrical burning smell and my high beams start flashing on and off (high beam indicator in dash flashing as well), horn goes haywire like it has a mind of it's own and my stereo faceplate starts to act weird flashing as well. Freaked out by all of this, I decide to do some on the fly trouble shooting and detached the face plate of my stereo head unit and noticed that the problems went away. I reinstalled the faceplate and the problems return so I left the faceplate off for the rest of the drive. I now decide to test the the high beams while driving (it's dark out by now) they work fine with the flash and stay on modes. Decided to test the horn and the horn seemed like it was shorting ( faint horn sound and intermittent) I've replaced the stock horns with the Hella Supertones and oh my are they loud (when working properly) I did notice that before shipping my car, my horn had some issues as well.

Today I went to trouble shoot some more and been on 240sx.org and nico searching like crazy (been searching for the past 2 1/2 days) and I decided to see if for some strange reason the alarm would go off with the horn (I've never had the key fob so I need to roll down the driverside window before locking the car up and after a few minutes when the alarm is set, reach in to unlock the car causing the horn to go off) I didn't get that far since I had thought to my self....."I wonder what kind of wires are under the left fender..." BINGO! at least I think I've hit the jack pot. Having Tein coilovers and wider wheels all around had caused the nice bundle of wires that would normally be protected by plastic tubing and a plastic inner fender (inner fender was removed in favor of fenders being rolled to give clearance for the wheel/tire) to be exposed and some wires have been rubbed/frayed to the point of not being connected anymore. Quickly inspecting, I remember at least 2 different color wires that need to be mated back to their other ends. Ran back into the house to tell you guys.

Plans are to re route that bundle of wires higher into the top of the fender so that it wouldn't be affected by the tire rub. Questions I have are... Could this be the problem or something else entirely? Is the cause of the electrical smell these damaged wires under the fender or could the smell be my ****ty ebay brand 6-puck clutch kit with my lightweight Fidanza flywheel going bad (clutch just doesn't feel the same after installing it myself... and kind of chatters when not on the accelerator (been in the car for about 2 years and engages/disengages at inconsistent times even after bleeding the system numerous times and after removing the clutch dampener box thingy) and why would my faceplate have control over the highbeams and horn going off? Or was this just a coincidence?

Thanks for the help everyone may offer.

[anthony_S14]

no one?