'94 Range 5 Speed Manual won't go into gear.

Hello,

I have quite the story to explain what's wrong with my truck, I'm not even sure that it's a transmission problem, but I THINK it is. I was bombing home from work in my 5 Speed Manual '94 Ford Ranger XLT, when I noticed that the engine was revving but the speed was not increasing. I had the cruise set for 90 k, and the rpm's just started going up without the speed increasing. I shut off the cruise, and found that if I went too hard on the accelerator, the same thing would happen. I shifted into neutral, rolled to a stop sign, put the truck in first, and took off slowly. Everything was fine, until I went to speed up. There was a bang, and I lost movement, the engine would just rev, no matter what gear I put it in. I pulled over on the highway, popped the hood and a boquet of smoke greeted me, smelling very much like burnt clutch. Now, I hardly use the clutch for shifting, other than first and reverse, and after I went through my first clutch at 16, I learned to be a better driver. I can move the shifter freely now through all of the gears, and it sounds like they engage, but no matter what, there is no power going to the wheels. The drive shaft is not spinning, so it's not my rear end...I tried locking the hubs and putting it into 4WD, but it didn't help. I was told that it would be something as simple as a linkage in the shifter, or as complex as a broken shaft in the transmission. There are no noises, and no smoke...I'm a backyard mechanic at best. Any insight or help with my current situation would be greatly appreciated. If you need any more information, I will check this post daily, or you can e-mail me at kole_johnson@hotmail.com

Thank you

Some times clutches can fail unexpectedly.

I had one fail about a week after installation.

the friction material on one side of the disc cracked and the friction
material onn that side simply fell apart in chunks.

The other side was PERFECT.

ONE side of a clutch is insufficient to transmit ANY meaningful torque

If you smelled "burned clutch" why are you considering other possibilities?

that's a pretty obvious symptom....

AD

I've had clutches do weird things as well....... I even managed to burn through the rivets on one finally....... talk about a mess just kinda metal on metal superheating for a couple hundred miles. no I'm not that big of an idiot, but I bought a truck with a supposed new clutch... since when was new 75k+ miles?

btw, they can also rust together.... and they can explode, I don't see where fragmenting would be impossible.
The only other thing I would suspect would be input shaft but I don't think you'd be smoking clutch action.

I managed to get my 97 ranger so deep in water the clutch was slipping once upon a time... that was 50k ago if you just glaze one, you can regualarly drive one for about 500 miles and it'll hold somewhat again, lol.
I'd say yours is beyond this, it sounds like the spring "fingerlike" things are busted and not giving any clutch pressure, or the material is just dust now.

Thanks for the quick responses and insight, I'll be tackling this project this coming weekend, now I know what to pick up/what to look for.