[stomachmonkey]

Found a Kia Forum but as must of us have discovered there is simply no other car resource that rivals the knowledge on Pelican.

This is the Kia I picked up for the daughter. Solved the remote mirror issue.

PSA here: don't go crazy with crap like armor all all over the interior, a lot of those products off gas and settle on electrical components coating contacts bad enough that they stop conducting.

On to todays issue.

Dealer had the radio replaced with a DUAL unit.

Everything was fine for the first month until one day last week she got in and started driving when smoke started coming through the vents. She pulled over, shut it down and called me.

I assumed it was condensate from the AC, we are in TX, it gets hot and that happens sometimes.

I run over there and nothing seems obviously out of order, little smoke wafting around near the firewall under hood. She'd been parked on a really step hill prior to starting it and I assumed something dripped / puddled on the back of the block and burnt off.

Drove the car home and no more issues.

This weekend she went to friends, parked in the driveway, came out and no start.

Run over there with cables and a spare battery and it presents as a starter or starter solenoid so have it hauled home. I did notice the instrument cluster seemed to be dead, gauges, gas, rpm, not reading but dash lights work.

Did the standard, check all fuses, swap relays, getting a solid 12 volts to hot side of starter solenoid. Decide to try the old smack it with a hammer so tell daughter to get in and turn ignition to start it and she starts yelling it's smoking again.

I jump in and for sure smoke pouring out from under the dash cap right above the new head unit.

Had a chance to pull the head unit today and whoever installed the thing ran speaker wire from the ground and power of the radios harness (not the factory harness) to ground and power of the driver back up light as a trigger for the back up camera (although for the life of me I can't figure how that would work) and the radios hot lead was burnt to a crisp.

I don't know if it shorted due to a bad splice job or if the speaker wire could not handle the load and turned into a glow plug or what.

Disconnected everything and figure I'll deal with that mess later.

Car still wont start so I ran a lead from the starter solenoid out to the battery to test it and she fired right up.

Yay, no starter replacement, good.

Not so fast. Hop in to move the car from the street to the driveway and it's sluggish, barely moves, like the parking brake is one but it's not. Reverse feels fine, forward feels like it's not starting in 1st but more like 4th.

Instrument cluster is also still dead.

So, the short that caused the smoldering wiring behind the radio. What else could it have taken out? I know, a lot, rhetorical.

I'm unfamiliar with this car and could use some hints on where to start diagnosing.

What could be common between the instrument cluster and gear selector but not affect anything else, besides the starter?

My line of thought right now is since the instrument cluster is not functioning the transmission can't get a read on speed and does not know what gear to start out in.

Where would you start?

As an aside chewed the dealer out and he said he'd try to get the installer out to my house to deal with the radio but I think it's beyond that now.