Hey so i decided to expand my collection of fords and got me a 96 F-150 302 5 speed.

Truck was working great until last night when one of the clips on the front universal joint on the rear drive shaft flew off on the highway causing the cap to almost push out of the tail shaft. Anyway when this happened the drive shaft did not actually drop it just caused it to get extremely unbalanced and shook violently until I could pull over.

Tonight I replaced that universal and found a new problem. Now when the clutch pedal is pushed in there is a metal on metal grinding coming from the clutch area. The clutch is also biting at a lower point in the pedal then it was before and finally when pulling away in first the truck will start shaking VERY violently until the clutch is fully engaged. Any ideas as to what I should look into when I start tearing into it?

 

It reads like the drive shaft imbalance may have caused pilot bearing to fail, if you were in 4th gear when it happened then trans main shaft was hooked directly to input shaft(clutch shaft)
But worst case is input shaft bearing

The input shaft sits in the bellhousing, one end inside transmission, supported by a bearing, the other end has the clutch disc on it and the shaft is supported by the pilot bearing inside the end of the crank shaft

When the drive shaft started vibrating that would be transfer forward causing vibration at the input shaft end and when you pushed in the clutch pedal then only the pilot bearing would be there to limit the vibration

The metal to metal sound with clutch pedal down would be the input shaft flopping around in the end of the crank, but that may also mean the input shaft bearing in transmission is also bad now
Once you pull back the trans and get the pressure plate off, you will be able to check the play on the input shaft