Chris, there's a short list of things that could be contributing to your problem.
First off, it's not at all abnormal to have a little gear clash on these beasts. It's their nature. If it's bad enough that you actually have difficulty getting it into gear, then there's almost certainly somethin' need fixin'.
Most common is a dirty/sticky pilot bushing. This is the bronze bushing inside the rear end of your crankshaft. You see it through the center of the clutch when you have the ttransmission and torque tube off. It supports the front end of the shaft. Very common for this bushing to be worn or more likely gummed up, which causes the shaft to stick and turn with it it instead of the bushing turning freely around the shaft. The shaft turning will cause your gears to crash a little when you try to put the trnny into gear. One way to check this out (doesn't always work but usually does) is to leave the tractor running with the clutch pedal depressed, the shifter in neutral and the PTO engaged. Have a helper look at the PTO shaft. If it's turning, but only just creeping, they can try (CAREFULLY!!) to stop it or at least slow it down by hand. If that works, it's likely just a sticky bushing troubling you. If it doesn't try to turn, you may just be experiencing the usual clash of an unsynchronized tranny. If the PTO is turning with gusto, fast enough that the splines are a blur and it's speed goes up and down with the speed of the motor, they SHOULD NOT ATTEMPT to stop it by hand and you likely have another problem.
You could also try using a stiffer oil in the tranny, which will help to slow down any turning the input shaft might want to do brcaue of a sticky pilot bushing, or simply the momentum of the tractor just having been stopped. 90W is the standard, but someting like 85-140 might help if you're not in a very cold climate.
I'm a little interested/concerned about this tightening up of the free-play adjustment you talked about. Are you just tightening it up thinking that you're fixing something or are you actually taking up some slack each time?
If you are actually taking up new slack each time, I'm gonna go out on a limb at suggest that the jam nuts that lock down the finger height on your clutch cover weren't tightened down, allowing that adjustment to move. If it gets bad enough, you wind up with the fingers just flopping around out of reach of the fce of the bearing. It's not common, but I've seen it a couple of times. On a bigger Farmall (at least on an M, I know, BTDT), you could get the clutch off the flywheel and fix it. On a C, to do it RIGHT, and ONLY if that is the problem, would mean splitting to get the clutch off and set it up to specs and tighten everything down on a bench before re-installing.
You might be able to scope the potential out for that problem I'm describing by looking up through the hand-hole on the bottom of your torque tube and checking out two things. 1) Turn the engine by hand so that you can see the bolt and jam nut for each of the fingers, If any of those jam nuts are loose, you may have the problem I describe. 2) Set your free-play to the 1-7/16" (front of tranny cover to back of pedal) then crawl back under and look back the other way from the hole on bottom or through the hole on the side you use to grease the bearing carrier, and check out the clearance between the face of the throwout bearing and the fingers, Turn the motor over so that you can see each of them. That clearance should be about 3/16".
If those two things seem to be in order, and the noise is nothing more than just a little grinding before she clunks solidly into gear, then I go back to the pilot bushing as the most likely problem, if there is a problem at all. Remember they are noisy and clunky by their nature.
There's still the possibility out there that the clutch was not set up right and locked in properly to begin with, but ALMOST all of them come out of the box ready to go (cover and finger height) so keep that at the bottom of the list.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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