Well, got it all wrapped up. Friday night, we decided to set the backlash up so that Saturday morning we only had to stop by the shop quickly to set the bearing preload. Amazingly, we just screwed the adjusters in to take up the slack before we started measuring and incidentally nailed the backlash dead-on. We then checked the bearing preload with a set of really nice dial calipers just to see if we were in the neighborhood before taking it down to the machine shop. And we were pretty close. The next morning, took it down, tapped the adjusters just a little bit and it was in. All in all, pretty easy process, if you have the right tools. Glad that we did it ourselves, instead of paying someone to do it.
Bolted the diff back in, put the rear axles in, reconnected the rear suspension and PPF and swapped out my garbage, leaky Techno Toy mild-steel unresonated test pipe with a nice stainless-steel resonated ISR Racing test pipe to take some of the bite out of the exhaust (this car is so loud I got thrown out of Lime Rock Park!). Also sorted out the wiring that I got backwards, so now my reverse lights work properly. Now just have to wait for the snow to melt and the roads to get clean so that I can test the new transmission/gearing out. With that resonator, the baffle in the tailpipe and ~400 less RPM at cruise, this thing is going to be damn near luxurious.
