Years ago I talked with one of the Currie brothers because I thought my 35 was a POS. I was going to pick up one of their reverse cut D44s and feel confident everywhere. He asked me what size tires I was running, if I was going to be lead footing runs, and what I did in the way of wheeling. I told him 32 or 33 inch tires, no I'm not a lead foot, and my most difficult runs were Dusy-Ershim, Rubicon, Pinion Mountain, and Smugglers Cave stuff. I wouldn't be doing the Hammers. He told me my D35 rear and D30 front were plenty strong even though it meant not selling me an expensive piece of gear. I have a 98 with the Chrys 8.25 now, but in 10 years of wheeling with the D35 I never had any trouble.
About auto lockers in the rear. If you're on a wet muddy side slope your auto locker will kick in and the rear end will end up sliding to the low end of the slope. After it happened to me twice I dumped the Detroit and went to ARB front and rear. At least one tire has a chance of maintaining traction.