HELP ME - Renault Clio gear problems.

[Lewcal462]

My Car was making this God awful high pitch whining noise. it died off when the clutch was depressed. This lasted about 5 days. So i took it to a garage Who told me to drive it until something becomes more apparent so they can pin point the damage.

I got about 2 miles down the road. The car ground to a shuddering halt.
it goes in and out of gear fine as far as the gear box goes.
the clutch comes fully up and when you add more gas it slows pulls away but makes an awful grinding and shuddering noise. the car doesnt drive it just judders forward whilst making this awful Grinding Noise. The CV joint on the left side was on its way out. The car Wouldnt Roll Forward with the clutch depressed or when in neutral, As if it was stuck in gear? now could this possibly be the clutch release?

i had it recovered and the mechanic told me it could be the gearbox and proceeded to tell me that it would cost something close to the cost of buying a small terraced house in dudley. I was just wondering if anyone could give me any advice to avoid getting ripped off.

[fatjon]

Hard to diagnose 100% without taking the box off but in any event a clio box can be had for change out of a couple of hundred quid and a clutch sub £100 so no small terraced house size bills should be expected. A failed release bearing will be pretty obvious and the other possible is a failed input shaft bearing on the box. The latter seems more likely as you say the noise stopped when when you did the clutch. Of course once the input shaft bearing properly fails the shaft could wobble around and do all kinds of nasty stuff to the box and clutch.