I dont think you were right in any case because you never actually gave any helpful information.
I work on 15 million dollar weapon systems when im on sea duty, and i can tell you right now I wouldnt move on in my trouble shooting until fixing the wiring that looked this bad. I hope to god if you come across wiring that looks like this did, whether its an airplane or a go kart you fix it before you move on. I say this mainly because alot of people get in deep to trouble shooting they forget to go back and fix these kinds of things until they cause another problem.