91 ranger stuck in gear

hey guys, long time no post!

got a call earlier from a friend that her truck wont come out of gear.
her truck is a 91 ranger 4x4 2.9L pushbutton 4x4 5spd (FM-145?) and it is indeed quite stuck in gear (either 1st or third judging by the location of the linkage which is back and rotated slightly left so.. first?).

the clutch doesnt engage at all you can start the truck and let out of the clutch and it doesnt move. i can hear the what im assuming is the pilot bearing making a fast "tssst tssst tssst tssst" sound as its rotating.

she said the clutch, slave, and trans are new (to the truck) as of a few months ago and it has been fine till now.

i will note that there was about 3" of play in the pedal as in from its resting position i could pull it up or towards the seat about 3". im assuming this isnt normal for these trucks? (my explorer was autofail so i wouldnt know)

any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated! im going back to look at it again in the morning (daylight and lack of cops makes everything easier with a roadside repair lol)

I'll guess that the slave went out. I realize it's new, but chances are that it was a cheap parts store slave, not a Ford slave. Maybe she knows?
That 3" of pedal play could be the pedal bracket is broken, or maybe the pushrod on the clutch pedal broke or slipped off?
You should be able to shift the stick into neutral if you need to, for towing, etc.

see thats the thing. it wont come out of gear. it wont budge at all. i even tried the screwdriver trick i found in another thread and it still didnt work. i didnt want to force it for fear of breaking the shifter. after working on it a little ore i managed to bleed the clutch lines properly (thanks to the write-ups here) and removed some of that pedal travel issue (maybe an inch if that) but it still does nothing to help shift. even with the clutch properly bled it still wont move while stuck in gear and the truck is running. how likely is a broken input shaft? or even a worn syncro causing it to stick like that?

What I meant to say is, you should be able to shift into neutral with the truck not running. Can you do that? Or is it locked up even with engine off?

I can't answer your broken trans parts questions, but I do know that I see very little manual trans internal breakage stories here, they seem fairly stout. Clutches are the common complaint. And this truck having a recent clutch job makes me lean towards that as the problem, without having any other info then what you've posted.

I am somewhat confused. You say it is stuck in gear with the engine running. If the engine is running with it stuck in gear, the vehicle would be moving.

Are you saying the shifter lever is stuck in the first gear position but possibly the transmission is in neutral? If that is the case the shifter lever somehow slipped past the shifter rail pockets. To correct that the shifter lever will need to be removed. Make sure the rails are all in the neutral position. Then reinstall the shifter lever while making sure it goes into the rail pockets correctly.

I don't know the correct terminology for what I call the rail pockets.