Well, just for fun I grabbed some pictures. The axle is a tapered one, which might account for why it looks so pathetic, but it measures out a pretty much one inch at the narrowest part before the splines. It's a 2.94 gear too, which might account for something, but I just thought the ring gear looked really thin for an 8.25. Guess I had the new 8.75 sitting around too long for me to look at and compare, lol.