[Dave at Pelican Parts]

Very unlikely to be the TO bearing.

If the lever feels like it is selecting the gear, and never grinds even when the pedal is not pressed, then it sounds like there is no connection between the crankshaft and the trans input shaft. That means either the pressure plate isn't grabbing the clutch disk, or the clutch disk isn't spinning the input shaft, or the flywheel isn't connected to the crankshaft.

If the clutch hydraulics were at fault, the most likely symptoms would be that you'd never be able to press the clutch, that is the crankshaft and input shaft would always be spinning together and going into gear any time the engine was running would give you nasty noises.

You definitely want to make sure that the gears are being selected. It would likely be a lot easier to fix a gear selection problem, often fixable from outside the trans, than to fix a clutch or worse.

--DD