I'm Baffled!

Great forum everyone. I have searched all of the old threads for a solution to my problem... put a lot of the suggestions to the test and I still can't seem to get my '80 240D to shift.

Here, in a nutshell is the problem: about a month ago, while driving I lost the ability to shift into any gear ( sloppy clutch, etc.). I was able to limp home by starting the car in first and even shifted into second "on-the-fly" and backed the car into the garage by turning the engine over in reverse. I am a fair mechanic (or so I thought) and approached the issue logically... replaced master cylinder (no fix), replaced the slave (ditto), replaced the shift bushings, and have been struggling to bleed the system thinking that that was why the problem persisted even with an almost entirely new clutch system. Well about 20 minutes ago I thought that I had finally worn down her teutonic stubborness (I finally had a hard clutch pedal with nice resistance), but I was mistaken. Still no shifting. I can still start the car in gear and she goes but I cannot shift into any gear with the engine running.

The only warning I had prior to the failure was a slight grinding when shifting into second gear (it had been doing that for years and by waiting momentarily between depressing the clutch and engaging the shifter I could avoid it).

So my question is, what am I overlooking? could this be a release bearing problem? Is the clutch disk frozen on the splined transmission shaft? Hilfe!

K. E. Houtler