Finally got into rebuilding the diff and it's fighting me all the way.
The carrier bearings war on super tight. It took heat and a lot of grunt to get those off but managed to replace them with the new ones. The ones on there had been replaced before (made by bower IIRC) but the pinion bearings looked original.
The pinion bearings were in pretty good condition except for the fact that you can see where someone has hit them on with a punch instead of pressing them on.
The pinion shim was a little scored so I swapped it out with the new ones from Ford. Here's where the second problem occurred. The Ford shims had too small an internal diameter and although they fit on the shaft, the were resting on the chamfer rather than the flat face so I had to file them down. I pressed the bearing on and set about sorting the spacer. Enter problem 3. I got a Ratech spacer kit so I didn't have to worry about crush sleeves and the bloody thing didn't fit. Like with the shims, the spacer sat on the chamfer rather than the flat surface. This meant it was giving really bad (or none) pinion pre-load. So after at least 10 assembles and reassembles we ended up using the thinnest shim and putting the spacer in the lathe (it wasn't even flat) to put an inner bevel on it and also took some it down a little as the smallest shim wasn't small enough.
Well, all of that took nearly all day (at least 12 hours) so I have to go back to the workshop and spend another day making the case spreader and fitting the carrier and shims.
On the good side it's clear to see that the carrier bearing was shot.
![](https://i.imgur.com/ktaiNLZ.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/AxQ9ckt.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/pO5zPPm.jpg)