its entirely normal to have hard shifting in a ford manual transaxle when its cold. try upgrading to a fully synthetic tranny fluid. also, my clutch has exactly the same amount of play in the pedal...its a contour thing...my clutch is brand new.
and you should NEVER try to downshift to first gear...
unless your RPMS are below 1,000 and your doing less than 10MPH...im surprised you even got it into first at all. thats very hard on the clutch my friend.
