Clutch failure to disengage, solved
 

Well I finally found the cause of the clutch failure to completely disengage on my 300TD wagon which I had posted about a couple of months ago.

I finally had a friend drop the tranny and examine the clutch. The cause was that several of the fingers on the pressure plate were bent slightly apparently causing the plate to disengage unevenly and incompletely.

The new part (from a sachs kit) has a new pressure plate design where a ring is attached to the end of the fingers which reinforces them and prevents them from breaking off or bending so it looks like it is an improvement to the original part's design. The release bearing contacts the ring rather than hitting the fingers. What's funny is the old clutch looks to be OEM while the new kit was aftermarket but appears to be an improved design. We put the new clutch disc, pressure plate, release bearing and pilot bearing in yesterday and test drove it to find it is all fixed.

Now I am able to use all 4 gears and reverse again :D

It would seem that the throw-out bearing does the same thing that this new ring does. But who knows? It sounds like you've come across a valid improvement!

Yeah, I don't see how the fingers get bent or broken but apparently they do as I have seen a couple of posts here about that. The ring on the fingers seems to stiffen up the whole assembly and prevents any of the fingers from acting individually.

Mine always seemed to drag a little (the typical small grind if you rushed into reverse or second gear) but it apparently got worse to the point that the disc was dragging enough to cause it to not want to go into reverse any time when the engine was running or into second gear any time the wheels were turning. The new clutch resolved it...too bad it was such an expense to fix it though, especially considering the old clutch still had plenty of life in it!