First off I want to state that the truck of discussion is a 91 F-150 4x4 with a 302 motor and 4-spd with overdrive manual transmission. The problem that I'm having is that the truck is hard to get into 1st and 2nd gear. All of the other gears seem fine. I called a mechanic friend of mine and he said it's probably either going to be the clutch not disengaging properly or that the grease is low in the transfer case. I had another friend work on the transfer case a good while back and haven't had any problems to date out of it that I know of. This leads me to think that the clutch may be the culprit. I was just wondering what everyone's thoughts and input was on the situation. Also the truck has roughly around 200k on the truck. I've owned the truck for over 6 years and have never put a clutch in it and I'm not even sure if a clutch has ever been put in it. I just didn't want to go into fixing things in the truck that weren't broke.

 

Depends how hard, my old 92 had the same problem, sometimes I would have to go 4\5 or r to get it into 1, maybe nature of trans with mileage, prob is the shaft does not stop spinning, might be the syncro washer things that stop the gears from turning, or the clutch is just wearing out.

 

Probably the firewall flexing problem. There was a recall for it.

 

try your slave cylinder first. its either to clutch or slave cylinder.

 

Could you give me some more details on this? I've never heard about the recall. I'm just wondering quite honestly if it isn't the clutch because like I say it may still be the factory clutch for all I know in the truck.

 

The firewalls are too weak and after so much pushing of the clutch pedal the layers of the firewall separate and it pushes out. As it gets worse the firewall moves further out putting more distance between the pedal and master, which doesn't allow full release of the clutch. The recall was to add additional support to the firewall, a large or small plate depending on how bad it had gotten. If you have someone push the clutch several times while you watch the master cylinder under the hood you most likely will see it moving. You can reposition the clutch pedal pivot arm to take out the pedal slack but it will just get worse again unless you fix the firewall. I went through a whole lot of crap to get all the slack out of my pedal.

 

does it go from 5th to first easier? if so it could be your throwout bearing