[Gatorac]

It seems there are a few different ways to set carrier bearing preload. I'm comfortable with that. My concern now is the increase in preload when the bearing caps are tightened. This may be normal as the race is 2.891 and the cap is 2.865.

Thanks for all the help so far. There's a great write up on Ford-trucks.com that seems to be the standard. It's interesting that this thread also shows up on a Google search about 9" rebulding.