Ford :: 1993 - Gears Feel Crunchy

Car, 1993 Ford Festiva, 199,800 miles, original clutch, 5 speed manual transmission. Had the shifter cable replaced about 2 years ago, so that's not it. For almost the past year or so, there's been a lot of freeplay in the clutch pedal, like you have to press about halfway to the floor before you start separating the clutch, but no slipping of clutch. Mechanic said usually when clutch is slipping it will grab near the top. Its been, like, for the past few months I really have to make sure I've got the clutch pedal pressed ALL THE WAY to the floor to shift the gears. Like it grabs way down at the very bottom. And it seems the gears don't shift smooth like they used to, like the shifts are getting "crunchy" for lack of a better word, this is hard to describe in a post.

So anyway, sitting at a light, light turns green, felt a 'POP' as I pushed the clutch pedal close to the floor. So now the pedal pushes down very loosely until about the last 2 inches or so, and at any rate, almost impossible to shift gears. I can kinda jam the gears if the vehicle is moving, but taking off from a stop is darned near impossible, I can kinda jam it into second gear and rev the engine to get going. (And I only did that in order to get home) Actually I was about 80 miles from home when this happened, fortunately I was near a major interstate, only had to contend with 7 traffic lights and managed to hit 3 of them green. Rolling along in gear (any gear) seems fine, almost impossible to shift.

Car now sitting on front lawn, tried (with motor off) shifting the gears, with or without clutch pedal depressed. Gears feel 'crunchy', i.e. doesn't shift smoothly doesn't want to go into a gear. I was thinking along the lines of maybe a clutch spring or a synchronizer broke when I heard the 'pop'.

And this is off--topic, but to top it all off, I get in my other vehicle to go to the store, and within half a mile the "check engine" light comes on, but that's another topic, you can tell I had one heck of a day, someday I'm gonna buy me a new or newish car I'm getting sick and tired of patching up my rolling junkpiles, but for a variety of reasons which would be off-topic and thus verboten.