Burning wire in my engine bay? WTF?

[omgRWDgoodness!]

I found this wire sizzling in the rear of my engine bay on the passenger-side firewall and have no idea why. I assume it's because this bronze "line" thing it's touching is burning it, so I simply pulled the wire out from under the line until they weren't touching. It made a little fire or spark when they were touching while the engine was running, which created the white smoke that initially alarmed me of this problem. Does anyone have any idea what this wire and that bronze line is? I just bought my S14 at the beginning of the month so I'm not familiar with the KA24DE. I'll post some pictures so you guys can see what's going on.

Here's where this wire and bronze "line" are located in the engine bay:
http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w302/P_Toms/DSC_0295-1.jpg

Here's the wire after I pulled it out from under the line directly to the right of it (you can see where it got burnt):
http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w302/P_Toms/DSC_0297.jpg

This is a better look at the bronze "line" I'm referring to (the wire was originally in the cable guide visible in the photo, so you can see how they were touching):
http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w302/P_Toms/DSC_0298.jpg

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[essforteen]

tape it up it might be shorting the wire to the line causing it to burn!!

[Okinawandrifter87]

Same thing happened to me. Tape it up and make sure there are no exposed wires anymore. I ended up having to replace the end of a plug for the whole wire cause it shorted it and kept popping a fuse.

[projectRDM]

The line is A/C. Obvious.

The harness is the lower harness, something has rubbed enough to fray the insulation, grounding a wire in the harness. Remove it, unwrap, insulate the damage, then refit the harness.

[omgRWDgoodness!]

Same thing happened to me. Tape it up and make sure there are no exposed wires anymore. I ended up having to replace the end of a plug for the whole wire cause it shorted it and kept popping a fuse.

That's what keeps happening to my Wiper fuse, because I found that my windshield wipers weren't functioning when I got on the highway before arriving at my friend's house and discovering the problem. I went and got more 20A fuses according to the diagram and blew 3 of them before just putting a 30 in there. Will electrical tape do just fine for insulating the wires?

[Sileighty_85]

Never put a higher AMP fuse then what is recommened you will cause more damage that way and possibly set your car on fire.

pull apart the melted section and pull apart all the wires that are melted together

If it was me depending on how bad the damage is I would either heat shrink all the damaged wires or remove and replaced the damaged sections with new wires

[projectRDM]

Agreed. At age 18 you should be smarter than to just stick a higher amperage fuse into a circuit. They're rated that way for a reason. And you wonder why your wiring is burning up in places. Just stick a penny in place of all those fuses, you apparently don't need them anyway.

[omgRWDgoodness!]

Now now, this 30 fuse was already in there when I bought the car! I found that 2 or 3 other fuses were also of the incorrect amperage as well, so I replaced them immediately according to the diagram. The only reason I put the 30 in there was because I didn't want to leave my wiper fuse empty since I blew 3 of the 20's in a row. I know you guys probably think I'm some stupid kid, but I really care about my car and I only want the best for it, so I just want to make sure I do this right and not cut any corners. I went and got auto electrical tape and flex tubing today, and I'll make sure to take that 30 fuse out and put another 20 in there once I get that harness patched up.

Thanks for all your help guys

[omgRWDgoodness!]

Sh*t. Looks like I'm gonna need to repair the fried section of my harness, since now my windows don't go down nor does the intermittent speed work on my windshield wipers. What type of wire can I use to replace the damaged section of harness?

[93nismo]

fix the wires (solder/heatshink), wrap them, and replace all the incorrect fuses with the correct ones. and dont ever put a higher then recomended fuse in... thats dumb. your gunna end up frying the entire harnes that way, therefor makeing your repair an even bigger pain in the ass that costs more time and money. however, on the bright side of things, its not really a hard repair:) just make sure when your doing your wireing you do it 1 wire at a time if multiple wires were affected

[Sileighty_85]

Sh*t. Looks like I'm gonna need to repair the fried section of my harness, since now my windows don't go down nor does the intermittent speed work on my windshield wipers. What type of wire can I use to replace the damaged section of harness?

any good insulated wire will be fine, but you must use either the same size gauge wire or bigger, never use a smaller gauge wire.

Just Cut, solder, and heat shrink, just dont forget to slip on the heat shrink on before you solder it.

[omgRWDgoodness!]

Alright, cool. Now I feel pretty stupid for asking this, but how in the HELL do I unclip the one plug at the end of the harness? I was trying to unplug it so I could wrap it with electrical tape better, but after half an hour of tugging and pulling and trying to press down every damn conceivable tab to unclip the plug, I just fixed it down in there...