[lal Naja]

Sorry to hear of your hellish problem. As we all seem to agree that a spinning input shaft would cause this grinding. And now you've aligned everything you should be good to go. I read that clutch plate gap should be a minimum of 0.100" for the TKO to make absolute no possibile clutch plate spin. So if this is your final setup and you get gear crunch then you still have rotation of your input shaft with clutch disengaged. So what else can cause the shaft to spin? This is a shot tn the dark. But what about crankshaft end play? Say you measured every thing and you have 0.005" between the bearing and the spline and you have 0.010" of crank end play. With a situation like this a few thousands of movement of the crank and some expansion of components due to heat you end up with the shaft being driven by a great deal of friction. Not enough to move the car or the wheels, but enough to keep the shaft in rotation?. Arthur