Damn squirrels/injector wiring

[azanprophet]

I went out and started my car yesterday to go to work and it was running really rough. The car was shaking way too much and when I revved the engine I could tell the exhaust pulse was off, it sounded like an out of tune lawn mower. Really bad.

I immediately started thinking about what could be wrong...spark plugs, spark plug wires, fuel injectors, fuel pump and filter, all that stuff.

Being the cheap (poor) bastard that I am I start with the cheapest stuff so I get a friend to drive me to Champion Auto Parts for new spark plugs to see if that fixes the problem. As I'm pulling the spark plug on the second cylinder I glance over and see what looks like a hunk of mud and half a pecan sitting on my intake manifold. I reach over and this hunk of mud has nuts in it. I realize that it is a piece of fudge and right near where it was sitting it looks like a squirrel or some other rodent has chewed through the wiring powering the fuel injector to the second cylinder.

The wiring to that injector is completely chewed through and frayed on both ends and that injector isn't getting any power b/c of it. So I finished replacing all my spark plugs b/c it needed it anyway and found the real problem. Only three cylinders are running since the one isn't getting any gas.

Has this ever happened to anyone else or anyone ever heard of this happening? And what's the best/cheapest way to fix it? I was thinking about just splicing new wires since that would be pretty simple but I thought that I'd ask here to see if anyone has any other ideas.