8.25 axle shaft hitting cross pin

I pulled the 8.25 out of my 98 parts Xj to rebuild, regear, lock, and clean up before swapping it into my 94. Supposedly had 258k on it and didn't really look all that bad on the ring gear wear pattern. The things that caught my eyes were:

The pinion was rather difficult to turn (Guessing the preload was way off from the PO messing with it?)

The axle shafts and slid in and made visible contact with the cross pin inside the carrier and left spots, not a flat spot that I could see with my naked eye, but a definite contact spot. The left side being a little worse.

What would cause the shaft to slide in and touch the cross pin like this?

Hard cornering is about it. The C clip is the only thing keeping the axle shaft from walking out and the cross pin is the only thing keeping it from walking in. Aside from the shoulder of the axleshaft flange riding on the seal and the drum brake riding on the backing plate, that is, and neither of those should happen in normal use.

The only thing that will make the axleshaft hit the cross pin is hard cornering, the more circular wear that is evident (and less impact/peening) the more wheelspin was involved.

Mine probably look like someone plunged a dull end mill into them a couple times :wierd:

That's what everything I found was pointing to. It was just different than all the other rear axles I've popped open. Guess he took a lot of hard right turns... Makes me feel better about the rebuild that there isn't something horribly wrong with it

Normal for the shaft to hit the pin.