Crossing it out beats tapping any day.

Zip ties help keep things neat but they are not what dropped your temps. Moving the cables away from the front fan is what did it. Air could finally get through, that is the real fix. You could have used twist ties from a bread bag or even a shoelace and gotten the same 8 degrees. The ties just hold the new spot so it does not flop back into the fan again.

Forty feet and the guy walks away with a cracked lens? That is nuts. I always figured those helmets were mostly to keep your face pretty on camera, not to actually save your neck on a real fall. Hard to argue with that result though, $10k starts looking cheap real fast.