Voltage regulator smoking?

looking into the dash it really does look like someone unwrapped parts of the harness to trace issues, made some fixes and then just stuffed it all back up under the dash. The wire insulation looks so fresh and unfaded that it must have been protected by the wrap.

Question to some of the early A gurus here - in the first pic that looks into the dash there is a 5 wire connector that seems to be missing a bunch of wires - is that for the dash cluster or maybe one of the column harnesses?