welcome to 240d ownership
welcome to the club. Get used to it being a giant slug. Deffinitly disconnect the egr and prop the throttle plate open. If your shifts arent to your liking adjust the rod running over to the vacuum switch you showed (making it longer or shorter adjusts the way the trans behaves). But if you have a vacuum leak (which you do or your locks and stuff would work) you have to fix the vacuum leak first or you are just adjusting past a problem and it will be a problem again after its fixed (so just cut and cap that vacuum like going into the car and save yourself the headache). Depending on what you want these cars can be great (but if your like me and speed matters ... good luck). If you want to fix the jumping gas gauge you have to pull the sender out of the tank and clean it, plenty of write ups and it should be the same for 617s or 616s. The piece you put a X on is the oil seperator, if you remove that it will never stop burning oil (trust me, still trying to work around not having it).