I have updates on my problem, and mostly good ones too! 
After a lot of cursing, some blood shed and tinkering with angling I managed to remove the dash plastic cover completely.
Having done that, finding the burned cable and removing it was easy (electrical tape from '97 is really nasty tho). Now all I need to do is pick up some new wires that I can replace the burned supply-cable and find a way to repair the D.T.R.L path that fried. Really need to fix it, a used one is €80 plus shipping and a new one is a whopping €300.
Is it safe to just snip off a short stump of the same wire diameter and solder it onto the contact points, or should I try soldering a bridge? ?
