Rear end question

Ok Update, I limped car home trying to stay out of the "grind zone". Drop drive shaft, pinion nut tight....
Dropped cover, magnet in bottom is covered with very fine metal sludge, a few pieces smaller than a #2 pencil tip... Scary but not horrible. After reading and viewing videos, I understand a lot more about the contraption. I look at pinion wobble, very, very little.

I take bolts out of carrier and twist wheels to and fro, TONS of slack between pinion and ring. This thing was barely touching the ring.

So I look at how things are aligned, and when I broke the bolt earlier I removed and replaced all of them. Big mistake, when I removed the bearing caps the screw parts both came out. That threw it all off, I didn't think the pumpkin was aligned by anything but the bolts.

So I basically snugged up the screw in parts to make the bearings seat in the race. But I didn't take into account how far the pumpkin had slid to the drivers side. This left a huge gap between pinion and ring.

So after about 3 hours of "centering" the chunk to just mesh with pinion, I got it to spin extremely smooth and no noise (by hand, not started it yet)

I have no slack in the bearings, pinion, or pumpkin... So wtf, I buttoned it up and will give it a spin LOL! Need more gear oil and it's late....

If I gotta redo the rear, might as well break this one real good! LOL Who knows it may last the rest of summer, MAYBE MORE? Will post pics of the tiger stripe on the carrier where the pinion nut loosened and ground stripes into the carrier!

Hell ain't this called hotrodding? In the computer world it's call Plug and Pray!

Thanks, all for your advice, U were dead on SuperShafts!

I wish 5 or 10 of yall lived near me, but Yall would probably move away! LOL

I'll post pics later, I don't want to jinx it. Mechanically, its functional, numerically its horrible, but wtf I will need to replace it anyway, so I may get some fun out of it this year.