Triumph Repair: follow up - 1979 Triumph TR7 Clutch Issue, automatic transmission fluid, forked spring

Question
Howard - sorry it has been so long, but I was waiting for parts to be delivered!

If you recall, I was having problems with my 1979 Triumph TR7 5-speed.  I was having trouble shifting into 1st as if the clutch was not completely disengaged.

I wound up rebuilding both the master and slave cylinders, as they were in very bad shape and both leaking.  They now appear to be working properly, but now I have no clutch response at all.  I am concerned that in removing my slave cylinder, I somehow disengaged the release lever arm.  The arm moves very easily and appears to hit a hard stop when the last inch (or so) of the rod is pushed into the housing.

How would I know if the release lever is disengaged, and are there any ways to get it back engaged without taking the whole gearbox off?

Thanks!
Vito

(PS - in my down time I've repaired the exhaust, properly adjusted the carburetors, installed missing bolts (various) put the proper oil in the engine, and replaced the automatic transmission fluid someone put in the gear box with real gear box oil.  This has been a labor of love but now that I see the light at the end of the tunnel, I'm afraid it's a train!!)

Answer
Hi Vito,
The TR-7 5 spd clutch arm rides on a peg screwed into the gearbox and the arm has a forked spring clip to hold it on the peg. The fork has two pegs, one on each ear of the fork and a slider block is on each peg and they side in a grove in the release bearing slider assembly. The slave cylinder operation rod normally has a plastic retainer to hold the operating rod on to the end of the clutch arm. If that was in place and you pulled it out of the bell housing, you could have pulled the clutch arm off of the peg and thus allowed the fork to disengage the slider blocks from the release bearing slider. If this happened you positively can not get the fork to go back into the release bearing slider without removing the transmission.
However, if the slave cylinder rod is still attached to the clutch arm (by the plastic clip) and you have about an inch or so sticking out of the bell housing when it is pushed all the way in to the bell housing, it is probably ok. When you push the rod in by hand you can not disengage the clutch by hand as it takes close to 400 lbs to move that slave cylinder rod when it hits the pressure plate.
The clutch system is hard to bleed the air out of so that is the first place I would look for your problems.
Howard