Darth, on the dying when you put it in gear, one thing you need to check
for is the presence of a ground strap between the engine block and the firewall. Novices
often leave these off when swapping engines and it can lead to all kinds of driveability
problems due to bad grounds. Make sure the strap is there and that connections on both ends of the strap are clean and tight. On the key coming out, it sounds like your antitheft rod
that goes to the base of the column under the hood from the shift linkage may be out of adjustment to where the shift collar on the column doesn't go high enough in park to allow
the key to be removed, Try grabbing the collar with your hand and rotating it counter clockwise a little and see if the key will come out. If it does you need to adjust the anti-theft
linkage rod at the bottom of the rod you can loosen the bolt and adjust the rod to be a little bit longer and that will fix it. on the speedo cable, they can be very difficult to get snapped
back in. You have to just keep jiggling the cable while you depress the latch spring with your other hand. Sometimes you have to jack with them for ten minutes, then all of the sudden the cable just suddenly jumps on no problem.
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