[ponchopete]

Jack Ferris brought up an excellent point about gears. The Pro Gear, being a softer material, will flex and absorb some of the shock to the drivetrain on the launch, which helps the gears to last longer. They wear very quickly with any street driving, though. Tom's Differentials out of California is supposed to have developed some sort of process where he is re-heat treating the Richmond street gears and is supposed to be getting similar strength with better wear characteristics than the Pro Gear. It might be worth looking into if you plan on any street time for the car.

As a note on bending the axle tubes, personally, I've found that having the tubes fully welded to the center housing seems to help fix that problem. Of course, if you have this done, the housing will need to be checked for straightness after welding, and corrected, if need be. After speaking with a couple of the tech guys at Mark Williams, they recommended this procedure instead of running the axle tube braces available from Ultimate. He stated that if you're bending the axle tube, chances are pretty good you're going to also end up bending those much smaller tubes that make up the braces. Interestingly, he also stated that with the billet carrier caps installed, there is virtually no strength to be gained by the girdled rear housing covers, although he highly recommended them for any 12-bolt using stock carrier caps.

"My car would be fast if it had an engine, transmission, and rear axle in it."