Hey all,

First time posting here. 2012 Audi A4. Had my spark plugs replaced at 75k over the weekend. Gaps around 0.03 and torque at 20 ftlb. Drove about 50 miles yesterday and ran smooth, lots of power and acceleration. Went to start her up this morning and had very rough start with terrible idling. Tried again and even worse. Looked under the hood and found fried cable, see attached picture. Any ideas why the cable got fried and estimates on cost to replace? Thanks a lot!
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Picture attached

 

That appears to be your Camshaft position sensor. It is needed to start the car as it will tell the computer the firing order. Normally once the car runs it will ignore the sensor and rely upon another sensor to keep firing in the correct order. Which is why if it had problems but was running - you could drive for many hours without ever noticing anything.
It's hard to tell if the wiring is melted or ripped - from what I can tell I do not see any melting around the insulation though, makes me wonder what the shop did....

Anyhow on to the repair:

the sensor itself would be easy:
https://www.ecstuning.com/b-genuine-...or/07l905163c/
~50 bucks

However that does not fix the connector or the wiring
The proper (Audi-) way would be to purchase a new wiring harness but that will cost you an arm and a leg by itself. Someone still needs to install that thing and you are talking about many hours of labor.
Total cost:in the thousands would be my guess

The way I would do it and screw the proper way:
* Get yourself some wiring (same color if possible and gauge)
* solder the new pieces into the existing harness and use some heat shrink tubing to insulate the wiring (you don't want to cause a short)
* do the same thing on the connector piece going to the sensor (pop the connector out first, of course).
* reconnect the fixed wiring and call it a day.

Now hope that this is the only damaged piece in the car otherwise start hunting down what else is wrong.

 

Dealer said, RATS, literally! Really peculiar timing because pest control was just knocking on my door earlier today asking if we'd seen any critters around. To top it off, I found rodent droppings and bird seed in my driveway where I usually park my car.

 

That would make more sense and would make me more comfortable repairing just the wiring. This way you don't have to worry about something else going on and causing melted wires, blown fuses, etc. Make sure you take care of the rodents and replace/repair the wiring and you should be good