Thanks.
After I cut some of the sound insulation away behind the clutch pedal I quickly figured out that the clutch spring simply fits into a crease of the firewall and is held in only by the weight of the clutch pedal; the clutch master cylinder prevents the clutch pedal from releasing too far and dropping the spring. Very simple, just not what I expected from typical German "overengineering".
Instead of trying to remove the entire auto-trans harness (which near its C238 end was stuck around the heater box), I instead unwrapped it from the shifter all the way to the TCU connector. I cut off the TCU connector and the dash lights connector. This let me pull out all the unwanted wires, leaving just the WOT throttle switch wire (Grey/Yellow) and the 10 wires from C238, the connector near the ECU.
This let me make all the necessary electrical changes behind the instrument cluster instead of all over the place. Just 3 splices are needed:
ECU Pin 28 to Ground to bypass the Park/Neutral safety switch. - Splice Brown/Violet to Brown, both from C238.
ECU Pin 3 to WOT throttle switch under the gas pedal. - Splice Brown/Violet from C238 to the Grey/Yellow from the shifter area.
Cruise Control enable - Splice Blue/Brown wire (cut from dash lights connector) to a new ground wire running to the ground connection under steering column.
Another benefit of leaving the C238 connector and its wires in the dash is that it gives me signals and wires I might want to use in the future.
* +5V from the ECU Pin 10 (Brown/Green)
* +12V from the main relay (Red)
* Tach signal (Black/Blue)
* Fuel Rate signal (White)
* 3 wires that terminate near the TB where the Rheostat used by the TCU used to be (Orange/Black, Yellow, Brown)
Obviously I put tape over all the unused wire ends. And labeled each wire and splice. It finally looked like this:
