Hey gang, I have a couple things that are giving me trouble, and I’m hoping you can help.
'70 steering column collar. How do I get that darn thing off?
Speedo cable. How do I get it to clip back onto the speedometer? The plastic clip still appears to be intact, but I just can’t get the cable to seat all the way onto the speedo and latch in place. It catches just a wee bit, but still slips off pretty easily. Do I need to make sure I’m perfectly lining up the square peg with the square hole? The cable doesn’t go completely flush with the back of the speedo ~ like it needs to go another 1/6 to 1/8 " or so.
Mike, you can disconnect the speedo cable at the tranny and give yourself some slack in the cable to get it hooked into the speedometer. Yes you got to get the square peg into the square hole correctly. Mine doesn’t have the clip any more but stays in place just fine.
Well, that was going to be my next steps ~ loosen firewall clips and get more slack so I can fiddle easier, and then disconnect from the trans and give the wire a little turn and see if I could get it to seat.
Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.
Hello Mike, There is a U-shaped metal clip inside the collar that needs removed. With the lower plastic column cover removed from the metal dash, the inner clip of the steering column cover can be removed. And, for added fun… while sprawled out on your back between the driver seat & floor board with your head up against the brake pedal; lol 
Make yourself a little more comfortable. Removing 4 nuts will allow you to remove the drivers seat. I also lowered the steering column a couple inches by removing the 2 nuts that attach the column to the dash panel. This allowed better access to the “U” clip and more room to spread the collar cover to remove it from the column.
Thanks fellahs! So if I have to go through all that to get it off… how much trouble is it to put back on?? LOL!
Same steps, only backwards?
Ok, so I got into it with my speedo cable this weekend. Pulled the end off the trans and gave the wire a little turn. I was able to get the cluster end of the cable to fully seat… but that little clip still just would not “catch” properly. Decided that it is going to have to be “good enough” for now, which means I’m sure I’ll be back in there next month when I get the car on the road and the speedo doesn’t work for whatever reason :-/
Also worked on getting the column collar off. That didn’t really go well either. I loosened the bolts/nuts holding the column to the dash, and took a look inside the column cover with a little mirror. Looks like mine has the same clip as this…
So in order to slide the cover down far enough to clear that clip, I need to remove quite a bit of “stuff” from the column. And since my only reason to remove it was to try and clean it up some and possibly repaint it (it’s quite faded and scratched up), I decided that was not “mission critical” and put everything back where I found it.
sigh so basically a lot of time spent with very poor results. Yay?