well dustin, I owe you one... I took it apart again for the 11th time and took a good look at the clutch mechanism, I made a noobie mistake.... It appears to be in backwards.. I looked at this thing several times and thought it had to engage at the ledge on 2nd gear, but in actuality, it engages at the rise point... I never thought to look at it this way, I usually just take off the shift mechanism and make sure I put it back the same way.. To verify, I had my friend, a highly skilled nitro junkie look at it, he came to the same conclusion that I did... it was backwards... now, when it stops raining like crazy, I will get a chance to test it out...
By the way, I did get married yesterday and all is great... she even let me tinker with the mt2 this morning and also this evening... got to love that... wait till I ask if I can buy a matrix or nemesis with some of the extra wedding money... Do you think she'll notice?