Removing the cable end from the lever is simply a matter of pulling back the spring and unhooking the cable from the lever. As for the cable housing being clipped into the backing plate, I've mostly used channel locks or a big screw driver to compress the clips while I pull on the cable housing. There's three clips evenly spaced. Once I get one or two of them compressed, I just pull the housing off to the side a bit to hold them in the backing plate hole. Then compress the final 1 or 2 to release the cable housing.
