I'm having a couple problems with the transmission/clutch on my zuk.

First.  It's getting real hard to get in 1st and 3nd gears.  It doesn't grind you just have to push real hard to get it to go into gear.  We've aligned the shifter lever a couple times and that seems to help a little but after a week or so it reverts.

Second.  The cluth is extremely hard to push in which makes it grind going into gear.  We put a new clutch and throw out bearing in it but that didn't help, it take all my dad has just to get the clutch pushed to the ground.

Any ideas??

You may want to try and lube the clutch cable.  They can get nasty and stiff.

clutch cabe could be your culprit, you could check it out by isolating it, pull the cable off of the shift arm on the side of the tranny and try to move it with like a cresent wrench or something.

It's not the cable, we've already checked that.  It just seems like something is not lining up but we don't know where to start.

I guess it could have something to do with the throughout bearing binding up or something?

We also put a new throw out bearing in it.   When we disconnect the cable everything seems to work smoothly on the clutch but it just won't go in gear, it's the weirdest thing we've seen but it's pretty much not driveable now.

With the cable hooked up:

how much freeplay in the pedal......should be approximately an inch before it feels like its pulling against clutch arm.

airski:

There is a procedure for setting up the clutch cable after installing a new clutch.

Sarge (the Weber Guru) came up with an illustrated, simple-to understand procedure that can be found by doing a search for clutch at Ack's FAQ.

Hope that this helps!