FIRE!!

[swampdonkey5]

Hello to all. I humbly approach the Forum as a new guy. I just signed up. Yup, I'm a newbie. Never been a member of a Forum. I am a diesel mechanic of 22 years. I've worked on everything from farm tractors to over the road tractor trailers to crash/foam trucks at airports. Now, over the past 2 years, I've been diligently caring for and LOVING a "95 E300D that I picked up for my wife with exactly 199,820 miles. Now, the car has 264K. I read on here about the wiring harness insulation being made out of recycled plastic, and deteriorating over time. How true. I couldn't afford a new engine harness for the OM606, so after seeing all the bare sections of wire and having troubles with gauges not reading correctly and cruise control acting up, I removed the harness, and built a new one with all new wire, using the original plugs (soldered and heat shrinked). Now, fast forward 1.5 years, my daughter started driving the car. This is a great first car. Not too big, but heavy, slow, and safe. She called me last week and told me that there was smoke coming from the A/C vents. She was 2 miles from home, so I told her to turn off everything electrical and drive home and shut it down. 3 minutes later, she called again. Now the smoke was thick, and black, still pouring out, and getting worse, with the engine shut down. Still on the phone, "now there is fire coming from the dash, from the climate control switches." Helplessly, 34 miles from home, I told her to grab the garden hose, and destroy the fire. The wife went ahead and called the fire dept, and they came and finished it off. The damage is done. fortunately, just the center of the dash and windshield are destroyed, but I'm sure that when I start digging, I'll find much more. My question is, have there been reports of this happening to these cars? I've googled around and haven't found anything about this happening to others. I really want to repair this because I really do love the car, and otherwise, it's in really great shape. Any thoughts or info would be appreciated. Oh, lastly, teenage drivers are expensive to insure, so we put the car on liability only 2 months ago. I'm out one beautiful Mercedes.