My radio broke yesterday. I took it out. Stupid radio. No tunes for the ride.
This next part is kind of technical, and I have little interest in simplifying it.
I think I figured out how to get first gear to stop grinding. The problem was that the synchronizer sleeve wasn’t fully engaging both sets of dog teeth. I originally thought I’d ease the load on the synchros by putting the clutch in and waiting several seconds until the mainshaft spun down. But in fact, I was dead wrong. The key has been to shift into first quickly after putting the clutch in so that the mainshaft is still spinning. I’ve done this for about a week and virtually eliminated the grinding. Reverse is still a problem.
I suppose I should have figured this out sooner. Whenever you try and shift a transmission with the car stopped and the engine off, you often can’t get every gear because the dog teeth aren’t lined up, so you only get partial engagement of the gear.