[Yelcamino]

Well I fixed it!

When I passed the wires for the gas pedal through the firewall, I shortened them as I mentioned in my opening post.

Each spliced wire got heat shrink around the connection. Once all the connections were made, I slid the metal sheathing down over the spliced bundle. Then I put a single piece of larger heat shrink over the entire bundle to keep the wires together and also to keep the metal sheathing in place.

Apparently when the large outer heat shrink shrunk, it must have shrunk so tight that any sharp points on the connections pushed through the inner heat shrink and made contact with the metal sheathing causing a ground situation (I only figured this out by doing a continuity test on each pin). After I pulled the bundle apart, I wrapped some electrical tape around each one, and suddenly the throttle worked!

Now I need to get back in there and clean things up so this doesn't happen again!

Thank you everyone that replied and offered suggestions and especially TomM for the schematics!