Lucky escape

[Sunny43.5]

Had a near disaster on Friday , getting our T5.1 ready for sale and needed a small dent just in front of the rear tail light repaired . It required welding those small keys that are then pulled to get the panel back in line with the bodies original shape , the guy doing the work at my home did not realise I had filled every empty cavity with sound proofing and blocks of 4 inch foam even up the rear pillars . Suddenly he is yelling "fire " and as I raced out to see smoke billowing from the van we both ran for the garden hose and stuck it into the hole in the body where the taillight wiring harness comes out from inside . As ours is fully trimmed I had to quickly remove the side trim and rip out the smoldering insulation and foam . Later after he had finished I was fitting the tail light back in and noticed that that tail light wasnt working , I turned on the van and suddenly found a whole load of fault lights on the dash . Traction Control and ABS and a light symbol were all on , pulled the side trim back off and found the harness was all burnt part way up the pillar which we couldnt see from outside . Luckily being involved in cars for many years and having done some work with car electrics I was able to join in a new section of wires to fix the problem , what was interesting was all the wires were in contact with each other as a lot of them are twisted together in bunches . After fitting the new section I was amazed all the fault lights returned to normal no fuse were blown ! I suppose I could have just let it burn as its insured for more than what its probably going to be sold for !!