Well, I read through the entire post and was assuming your fork was hitting the back of the pressure plate. You confirmed this so we know what the issue is. Mine did the same thing trying to get everything to work properly
A few things you should pick up before you tear appart your tranny, IF you want to stay with the passagers side pivot setup.
McCloud Adjustable Throwout Bearing,
Lakewood Adjustable Pivot Ball.
By using these two items you should be able to get enough leverage to disengage the clutch fully since you are using a diaphram clutch which requires a little less TO bearing travel. Reading the thread it sounds like you are using a passangers side pivot. Given the time you are going to put into this, I would like to reccomend you scrap this setup and go to a Driver side pivot. You may be able to get the passangers side to work, others have, but I'm betting it will be really close.
With the passangers side pivot, it's been my experience you have barely enough travel to fully disengage the clutch disk. The reason is you have approx a 60% loss in movement from where the clutch slave moves and the actualy TO. So if the clutch slave moves 1", the TO only moves 0.4". If you go to a drivers side pivot you get basically a 1:1 ratio and will have much more adjustment options available to make it all work, less pedal travel, etc
I ended up using these parts. Now I have a McCleod Bellhousing which is a little longer than the T-56 I believe. If that is correct you won't need the spacer that's included with the bracket below.
http://www.mustangsunlimited.com/ite...asp?T1=AB74+01
http://www.mustangsunlimited.com/ite...p?T1=87515A+01
http://www.mustangsunlimited.com/ite...sp?T1=N1439+01
I've been fussing with my passangers side pivot and spent over $1000 to get a shop (who just plain old screwed me) to get it to work. In the end I ended up spending $150 changing to a driver side pivot and I am so happy I did it. I should have done this a long time ago, saved myself the headaches and the $$. Would have solved all my issues.
Feel free to e-mail me and we can talk through the whole thing. :-)
Cheers,
Ryan Cassidy