I will answer my own question now that i have replaced the dif. carrier bearings on my dana 35 rear end. and add some info for those who are trying to diagnose rear axle noise.
My issue was a growling during coast and whine under light acel. at 35-45 MPH.
Disassembled rear end and found the LH carrier bearing badly worn, the RH was fine. this was the growling noise. This also allowed the carrier to move away from the pinion therefore increasing the clearance between the ring and pinnion gears and the gear backlash. This was the cause of the whine. This can easily be seen with the cover off. You can move the carrier up / down and left / right with a beefer.
As far as the axle spreader -
Dissasembly - no problem as the wear on the bearings creates the necessary clearance.
Assembly - different story - in order to establish backlash to spec, the spreader woul make the job a lot easier.
I installed shim on the LH side only and held the carrier in place with the caps and a wedge on the RH side instead of a shim, then measured the backlash.
once backlash was correct I measured RH side gap.
Found that the original shims were perfect and was able to reuse them.
The carrier with new bearings and shims is an extremely tight fit in the case without the spreader but it can be done by using longer cap bolts and drawing the carrier into the case, much better than a BFH. Just make sure it is square.
Make sure you clean the case, or you will be back in there.
hope this helps someone.
Enjoy,
Joe
