How to Replace Kick Down Cable 1982-91 GMC Jimmy Full Size

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality auto replacement parts and the bets service on the internet. Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1AAuto. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20 plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly, that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video, we'll be showing you how to replace the transmission detent or down shift cable in this 1986 GMC Jimmy, same as a lot of GM vehicles in the '80s and the '90s with the 700 R4 four speed overdrive transmission. The only tools you'll need on this vehicle are a screwdriver and a 10 millimeter wrench. I do use also a set of wire cutters to get the old cable out. Symptom of a bad detent cable is in this truck it had stuck so basically the transition thought I had my foot halfway down to the floor all the time so it wouldn't let the transmission shift until the RPM is on the way up. That's basically the symptom, is that the transmission will just wait a long time to shift.

First thing we're going to do is remove the air cleaner assembly. We'll kind of just put it on the side here. All we really need to see is this side of the carburetor. Now, just to make it easier for you to see, I'm going to disconnect, this is my cruise control wire and also my throttle control cable here. Then I'm going to take out my return springs. Now you can see, here's my cable and you can see it's all frayed and that's probably why it's getting stuck. It's easy enough. You just hold your throttle cable and it disconnects. Then you just use a screwdriver then you push on the tabs, that tab there and the other one is a little bit more difficult to get through here- push it through. Okay. You can pull this cable up and out. What I'm going to do, I'm going to take my new cable and I'm going to try and feed it right down in. It's not going to be that easy. I might have to get up underneath the truck to get this one over here.

I fed it down in all the way back. Bring it back up. There is a little key way in the cable. See here, there's a little tab on the cable and there's a little tab on the bracket. That tab has to go down. I'm going to put my cable in place here but I'm not going to hook it up yet. You can actually see that this cable is just not very flexible. You need to push it down back in some. Then now, we're going to go to the bottom of the car where the cable goes into the transmission. Right here is where my cable comes down and hooks into the transmission. Okay, I'm going to take off this bolt. Sure enough this is a 10 millimeter nut so I'm going to remove it. If you've been driving your car, it's going to be hot up here. You'll probably want to do this after it's cooled down. Once you have that bolt out, I'll pull my cable up and out.

As you can see right there, there's a little hook that goes into the detent cable. You'll hold on to that. Okay. Make sure that you went on there. Okay, once you get that on the hook up, make sure it goes up into your housing here and force the cable back down into the transmission. Get the bolt in. Once you get the bolt in, tighten it up with my hands and then I'll tighten it with a wrench. I'll tighten that bolt up. You want to tighten that but not be crazy tight. Its plastic holdings so you just have to be four or five inch pounds or so. Here back onto the hood, I'll tug on my old one to see if I can get it out. It may be routed in between some stuff. I'll probably have to work on that. You take your new one. Okay, if it's nice and tight, that's good. If you need to adjust it, what you want to do is there's a button over here that releases the tension, okay, as long as you got it nice and tight there, all's you do to adjust this is then get in your car and stab it to the floor real quick.

Okay, what I'm going to do, I'm going to hook up all my other stuff here. Adjust the cable with all the stuff back on. You strictly and forcibly stab to the floor. Now the cable is adjusted. Just going to put the air cleaner and stuff back on and we'll take it for a little road test. One thing I did notice right away is with that old cable, there was a hitch in the pedal. I push the pedal down about an inch then it would get hard which was that cable, that cable really wasn't moving. Now, the cable action or the pedal action is smooth all the way through with the new detent cable on there. The easiest way to get this old one out of here is to take a pair of wire cutters and just clip it and then you can easily pull it right through from the other end. Okay, now you can see my old one, it barely even pulls through. It's so frayed. That's why it was sticking. That's why the transmission is acting a little bit funny.

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