Still to hear what happens with clutch in, going straight from neutral to reverse with engine running at idle and perhaps say 1,200 rpm.

Additional test. Place in reverse clutch on floor, engine running, transmission.gears are all stopped. Move to neutral, wait a couple of seconds leaving clutch pedal on the floor, move back to reverse. Grind or no grind? If grind, either clutch drag or pilot bearing drag. 40 seconds for all of above.

The answers to these might/would eliminate much irrelevant speculation.

What causes the bent clutch fork bracket?
I have a bent one on a Tremec 5 speed w/QuickTime bellhousing.

I think that all this aggravation is trying to get me to dump my z-bar and linkage for a hydraulic throwout bearing but I just don't have the cash right now to do that upgrade.

I have the same issue with my Diplomat. Sometimes hard to shift into first from neutral.
I've blocked the pedal to the floor, it had plenty of air gap and the disc spun very freely when i crawled underneath. I really thought i was having a clutch dragging or even pilot bearing issue, but it doesnt seem to be the case.

I've got bell housing runout down to .003 or .004. Trans only has a few thousand miles on rebuild, Centerforce DF clutc, Sta-lube GL4 75w90, shifter is only a few years old.

The weird thing is that it usually only does it when the car is pointed down hill. Is it possible that the disc is just laying against the fly wheel and grabbing enough to spin the input shaft a little sometimes?

Have you tried 2nd or 3rd under those conditions ?? I really doubt the disc would be dragging when pointed downhill.

I'm working my way through a bent clutch fork bracket in the new QuickTime Bellhousing I recently installed. I had just put everything back together for the first time and went out for a cruise. The clutch was operating properly and I was happy.

But then I depressed the clutch and I could feel something give way. Fortunately, I wasn't too far from home and I limped back in 2nd gear. I'm running a Centerforce Dual Friction setup with a diaphragm pressure plate that has pretty light release pressure. I got the car up on jack stands and looked in the clutch fork hole in the bellhousing and could see that the pivot bracket had folded over (see picture). All I could think of was that I had installed the wrong offset pivot bracket and every time I hit the clutch, the pivot bracket wasn't lined up with the detent in the fork and the pressure was trying to bend the bracket out so it would fall back into the detent. So I took it all apart and double checked my spacing ... it was good. After careful examination of my throwout bearing, I came to the conclusion that when I inserted the clutch fork, it only snapped into one side of the retaining clip on the throwout bearing. The other side never clipped in. This caused the whole assy to be misaligned and after just a little use, the pivot bracket folded over. It was always a frustrating experience trying to get that clutch fork properly inserted and the access hole in the QuickTime is smaller than the one in the Lakewood making proper fork insertion even more difficult.

I bent the bracket back to normal and tried to insert the clutch fork with everything on the bench. After several attempts, I was never able to get both clips on the throwout bearing to properly clip in. I had a spare new throwout bearing so I looked at that one side to side with the one that I took out of the car. The retaining clips didn't really line up very well with the fingers on the clutch fork with either throwout bearing which would make it hard to get both to clip in when installing the fork. I tweaked the clips a bit for better alignment and then tried installing the fork with everything out of the car. I was successful on 3 out of 4 attempts to insert the clutch fork.

The pivot brackets that were supplied by QuickTime were pretty flimsy (see pic #2) in comparison to the one that was on the Lakewood that I was replacing. I'm going to fab up a new pivot bracket out of some heavy angle iron that I have and then when I get it clipped in, I'll use my video camera borescope thingie to make sure both clips on the throwout bearing are actually engaged.

I think that all this aggravation is trying to get me to dump my z-bar and linkage for a hydraulic throwout bearing but I just don't have the cash right now to do that upgrade.

Bloody 'ell, I just saw this.
Which type fork pivot bracket was in your QuickTime?
The butcher shop that put my trans in used the A body bracket.
In a B body.
In your pic, the B/E body bracket is on the right.
Were there spacers under your bracket?