So I bought a 1994 mustang gt for 1700 bucks that needed some work. The owner said he thought it needed a new clutch fork and throw out bearing. Upon closer inspection. The whole trans was bad. Somehow he ran the T5 in the car without fluids.

anywho. This whole car has been a relative nightmare and have mostly conquered all the problems come my way. And I say problems as in the car has been Frankenstein”d together.
like a carb swapped 5.0 with a trans cast number leading to a 1987 thunderbird turbo coupe with whatever bolts were found that’d fit in.

anywho. Regardless. I bought a “new” world class T5 that belonged to a 94-95 mustang gt. Which is great.
And I bought a clutch kit with a flywheel from American muscle. Which was made by exedy and ford performance.

I managed to get the new parts installed.
Put in a new rear main seal, and pilot bearing.
I got the new flywheel on and torqued to spec.
put the clutch disk on with the alignment tool and bolted the pressure plate on to spec.
And put the clutch fork on with the throw out bearing on correctly. (I made to make sure I did it right, even watched a ChrisFix video with his 98 mustang GT)
and the new pivot stud and made sure the input shaft didn’t have a lot of play.

however it turned out the input shaft was a little too long. And shaved it off a little so it’d fit into the pilot bearing. And fit fine and all was dandy.
put new Synthetic Valvoline ATF in it like the WC T5s go for. Put everything back together.
and started it up and tried to go for a break in drive. And it won’t go into gear.

it goes into gear when the car isn’t running. But when it does run it won’t go into gear.
I went to check if the clutch cable needed adjusted and the pedal is super stiff. And upon inspection. The clutch fork engages all the way in and forces the throw out bearing against the pressure plate springs. (I can’t get my pinky finger in between fork and bellhousing it’s that tight)

then a buddy of mine went to see if maybe the input shaft was riding and dragging. Or if the clutch was dragging.
so we took a breaker bar and put an extension on with a 23mm socket and spun the engine over. And it spun freely.
then we put it in first gear and put the clutch all the way in. And it spun freely.
Then we released the clutch and the engine wouldn’t budge.
so it engages gears and disengages.

and it has us completely stumped.
we have no idea what to do.

Also, I noticed that once’s it’s been in gear and stopped. It’s really hard to get it out of gear. Like you have to use elbow grease to get out out of gear.

 

your input shaft was too long because of the wrong bellhousing. you must have a fox bellhousing, and a sn-95 input shaft.

I commend you on doing your own research. It shouldn't matter i don't think, but a 98 mustang had a mod motor and a different transmission entirely.


it sounds like your cable isn't doing its job correctly.

 

Thank you for the reply!
That would make sense, I wonder if it’s too late to theoretically put in a different bell housing on.
considering the input shaft was shaved a little to make it fit.

anywho, I don’t know if it would be the clutch cable.
The person who owned the car said they put in a brand new BBK clutch cable in the car
but didn’t put the quadrant in the car. But he did hand me the piece. It was blue and aluminum.
we thought it was the cable at first until we got under the dash and installed that piece.
Now the cable is super tight and when the clutch is engaged. I can’t even get my pinky in between the fork and housing.

anyway, I appreciate the reply!

 

is the firewall in good shape? i fought problems with clutch adjustment for a long time before i realized my firewall was ripped and causing the adjuster to flex.

 

clutch disc installed backwards would be my next guess, if your cable is adjusted right

 

Often, the hub of the disc extends farther out from the facing on one side: on those, the hub hits the crankshaft, preventing flat alignment of the disc against the shaft. not always, though.

 

yeah, i thought it would be a challenge to do that, but over the years people have surprised me on performing the impossible

 

Pretty sure it’s on there right. I looked on the clutch where it said “FW side” And looked which side the high side was supposed to be on.

 

so if you put jackstands under the rear to get the wheels up, the wheels stop spinning when you push in the clutch, but you still can't put it into gear...i don't know what else to tell you man


it also stumps me that you had to take off part of the input shaft. there is enough room for 2 pilot bearings in the end of every crankshaft I have seen. If one was stuck and you couldn't get it out, you should be able to drive it in and put in a new one in front of the old one. there is that much room

 

Even if the TOB is up against and pressing on the pressure plate fingers,that doesn't necessarily mean its pushing the fingers in far enough to disengage the disk from the flywheel.If you can't put it in gear or take it out of gear with the engine running,but you can if the engine is shutoff,its clearly not disengaging properly.Since you ordered the transmission new,chances are very high that you got the correct transmission for your year model.However,if you had to cut the input shaft shorter to make it fit,the chances are really high that you may have the wrong bellhousing as mentioned earlier.Ford made the bellhousing deeper on 94-95 models for the sole purpose of placing the shifter in the correct location for the console and dash,so when they done this they also had to lengthen the input shaft too,to makeup the difference for the bellhousing redesign.So having a bellhousing thats too shallow for the transmission to fit and having to shorten the input shaft would almost certainly mean the wrong bellhousing is being used.The clutch fork must also match the bellhousing being used because the two forks are different.The 94-95 fork is longer & its at a different clocked position compared to a 87-93 fork.So if you've got a 87-93 bellhousing,a Foxbody fork is needed.If you've got a 94-95 bellhousing,a SN95 fork is needed.To be honest,& when looking at the fork differences in the picture below,Im not even sure if the wrong fork would even fit in the correct bellhousing or not (in relation to the cable to fork angle) but by the looks of it,it seems like the SN95 fork would be way way too long horizontally to even hookup to the cable if you were using a Foxbody bellhousing with a SN95 fork in a 94-95 model with a 94-95 T5??

I'll be back shortly to add some additional info in.