Setup, 96 ITR engine and trans in a 95 Del Sol. 4.7 GearX FD with a MFactory Diff.

We ordered the swap from HMO, We installed the FD and Diff in the trans. everything looked great in the trans. Put 10-30 Motor oil in the trans. Same stuff we ran for the last 2 years. Everything worked great around the shop. Shifted great, acted normal. Went out to the track and it worked great on the practice day. Went back the next weekend and raced. Worked great for 2 15MIN qualifiers, 3 15 lap races, and 20MIN of the 1 Hour.
*** Car owner was riding the clutch in Qualifying and before i got in the car for the last half of the one hour. Hes having trouble with leg placement with the new cage setup.

Came in for the 5 min pit stop and I got in. Grabbed the shiftier to put it in first and it wouldn't move. Clutch depressed. Tried to put it in any gear. No go. It felt like it was stuck. Wouldn't pivot or move forward or backwards. pumped the clutch a few times still felt like it was jammed up but it was starting to move around more. Then another pump later it was going through all the gears and acting almost normal. I went out and did a 5-7 laps, worked great. Then it wouldn't go into 2nd. Just a split second of hesitation. Then it was kinda hard to put in 3rd. We were 3 Laps down and did 50% of the race for points so I parked it. Didn't want to trash the trans on its first weekend. once i parked it everything felt great again. No signs of damage or leakage.

Brought it in the shop today and found everything felt good again. But then i put it in reverse and it felt weird, tried going into reverse again and it was stuck wouldn't come out of reveres. Shut the car off released the clutch and it was still stuck. Rocked the car and it came out. We started it back up and it did it again. But this time i released the clutch a bit and it came out of reveres normally.
So i just put it on the hoist and found no leaks. (other then a inner axle joint blown) No impact marks, Drained the fluid and found, all the fluid was there and there was no metal in what came out. Stuck a magnet in and nothing. The guy who build the trans with me said check the clutch and pressure plate before opening up the trans.

So i will do that first but outside of that, the shiftier pivot itself feels normal, and when i went back out it was great. He thinks the clutch was overheated to the point its starting to fail and not release the clutch. Anyone else have anything like this before?

 

Sounds like the clutch disc spit a spring..might also wanna check the slave while the tranny is out.

 

A pressure plate failure (or partial failure) will exhibit symptoms of the clutch not being pressed at all (grinding into gear).

Not being able to shift the shifter at all means there is binding somewhere in the shift linkage (either the shift rod hitting something, or the shift piece is bent/mangled/blocked preventing engagement)

If the clutch disc failed completely, that would be pretty noisy, as every time you engage a gear, the center hub would rotate at a different speed than the flywheel, which would be pretty cool to hear.

You need to define if when you can or cannot shift, you can feel the synchronizer engage the gear. You also need to define what "wierd" is.

What was all replaced in the transmission? and was it rebuilt correctly? Did you get the 5/R tang back in the right spot?

There seems to be a lot of issues, none of which point to one answer.