Its got to be the clutch

I still couldnt remember exactly the symptoms that we'd experienced when Hugh and I tried to get her to drive. I even phoned Hugh to see if he could throw some light on my challenge - I wanted to be sure I was at least attempting to tackle the right problem; I mean, there would be no point stripping the clutch if in fact the symptoms indicated a busted gearbox etc.
I concluded that it must be the clutch and so in spite of what Haynes says, I decided to attempt the clutch removal without dropping the engine (Haynes says its possible, but easier on the bench) - and in conclusion I think I would agree with them - its not easy laying on the floor working upward inside the bodywork.... but it was possible.
The majority of my time was spent making a tool for removing the castle-ated retaining nut that sits deep inside the clutch housing. I had the genius idea of using polymorph as a way of creating a pattern of the nut for me to create my tool for - for those of you who havent got any polymorph, you really should get some. Its a fabulous material that is ply-able at about 65degC but goes hard as it cools - I thought that shoving some of it down the hole would give me a perfect pattern of the nut that lay at the bottom. In theory this was probably a genius idea, if it wasnt for the fact that 1. the polymorph got into every nook and cranny down that hole, and 2. the polymorph goes almost rock hard when cool - there was no way i could get the stuff out! I swore at myself (quite alot) as I chipped and carved that sodding plastic out for half an hour before getting back to square one!
In the end I used a lump of good old blu-tac and some engineering blue.
I would like to just take a moment here to thank TVR for pressing an engineering file into my hand at such a young age. I'm pretty good at filing, and better than that, I really quite enjoy it. So thank you TVR for giving me the gift of being able to file metal into useful shapes :-) It took me a fair while, as I had to keep going back and forth to the nut for the fine fitting, but once done and case hardened (I knew that industrial sized oxy-acetylene kit in my shed would come in useful eventually) I had a proper tool for removing that elusive nut - and it worked a treat :-)
So the clutch came off...... but was this the problem?