my 1990 f150 broke down..i noticed grinding when i shifted the last 2 weeks.yesterday,i drove in first,backed up,got back into t5r4uck(after a few minutes and put truck in 1st.truck went nowhere,tried reverse truck go and drives in reverse,tried 1st again seemed to shift into gear but still wouldn't go,tried all other forward gears and nothing reverse worked again..few days ago truck made whirling sound when engaging reverse,had to wait a min for noise to stop then it would go into reverse..... yesterday,truck shifted into gears when off but was still in gear when i put in nuetral and tried to push,had to start truck to engage nuetral,pushed truck into parking space ,noticed trail of clear fluid from where i had pushed from?

 

My friend you have a hydrolic clutch problem. The clear fluid was likely the dot 3 brake fluid used in the hydrolic system. Either it is the slave has died or the master cylinder. Most likely the slave cylinder gave it up. There may be a deeper problem though. Sorta sound like you have spun the center out of the clutch disk as well. Had a friend do the same thing on a chevy. Either way, pull the inspection plate and take a look. You will probably be able to see if something catastrophic has happend but other wise you are likely looking at pulling the tranny to do a clutch job unless of course it is the master cylinder.

Anyway, hope that helps.

 

ty wv trucker,was wondering what i could do to confirm or delete the master cylinder as the problem?

 

First thing to do is figure out where the fluid is comming from. Look at the clucth master cylinder and the firewall around it. If you don't see anything there, get down under the truck and pull the inspection plug. I don't remember exactly but I think it is a rubber plug that allows access to look in the bell housing. Look around down there and see if that is where the fluid is comming from. Chances are if it is a line or the slave the fluid will be coming from there. I think there is an inspection plate as well that can come off for access to the slave. I bled mine once but that was a long time and two trucks ago. If it is the master cylinder the standard would be to do the same thing you would do if the brake master was weak... pump it a couple times to see if it helps. If it is loosing fluid check the resovoir before you do that though and make sure it is full of dot 3 brake fluid.

Based on the other info I think it is likely that either the slave failed and caused the clucth disk to fail. The grinding getting into gears is indicative of the clutch not releasing properly and hanging a little not letting the trans spin down between gears.

Hope that helps.