I have my new speedometer cable in the dash and am ready to take the old one off the powerglide. My question is, do I just spin off that round metal nut and put the new one into the square hole? I have read the archives and there was mention of a shaft or gear slipping into the tranny and having to fish it out.I dont know if this applies to a powerglide tranny or not. I just wanted to find out beforehand if replacing the cable is real easy or if there are some tricks to know about when putting the new cable into the tranny. My old cable got messed up but the speedometer works fine so I think all I'll be doing is replcing the speedo cable. In other words I dont think i'll have to take out the gear.

I have my new speedometer cable in the dash and am ready to take the old one off the powerglide. My question is, do I just spin off that round metal nut and put the new one into the square hole? In other words I dont think i'll have to take out the gear.This method would be fine. You might need a pair of pliers, but don't squeeze very hard as it could out-of-round the knurled nut.

If you do have to overly squeeze the nut, squeeze the nut over its back side, to reduce out-of-roundness.

The only time you would worry about dropping the gear inside is if you were to remove the 'bullet' holding the driven gear to change the driven gear for another to correct for rear axle gear change and/or tire sizes.