ford escort troubles... clutch or...?

[dread_siren]

I love working on cars but this one has me stumped, its my mothers 1995 ford escort lx 1.9L manual trans.

car has been great, almost 200k miles she got it when it had 80k. always had full tuneups & fluid changes on time done by me. new brake calipers, other general maintenance. about 3 months ago it started loosing power, figured it was the catalytic and set about finding a welder and a piece of straight pipe (no clean air laws in my small town) well, we have the welder and pipe now but the problem has gotten worse...

the car acts almost as if it is in neutral or like the clutch is most of the way depressed, it has to be revved up tight then it only crawls down the road, it starts fine and shifts great though took off the vss and checked the fluid level, its fine... plenty of fluid in the brake/clutch reservoir. also it sounds like a bell is jangling under the hood when idling (cant find any wrenches I might have dropped whilst working though). I was hoping for some thoughts before dropping the tran and replacing the throwout bearing, fork, plate etc.

[mark v]

Easy.... Put it in 4th gear and let out the clutch and give it gas, if the engine doesnt die and revvs up your clutch is shot.

[dread_siren]

well, that worked pretty well, same effect as first gear (even 5th didnt die)... looks like I install the new clutch thank you for the advice!

[mark v]

Yeah if the clutch was good the engine would have been killed as soon as you let the clutch out.

[BroncoJoe19]

Good call Mark!

I assumed that if he knew enough to be able to replace the clutch, throwout bearing etc, that he would have known if the clutch was bad. You know what they say about assuming.

[mark v]

Yeah, he knew it was bad already but he needed somebody to tell him it was bad from what I read.