Now all I need is for the replacement gear set to come in, because one out of the four in the set I have now is untrustworthy. (more on that later)
Meet the untrustworthy gear... It's the only one out of the set which has any visible damage; roughly 2/3 of the teeth have this condition, only on one face. Every other aspect of this transaxle is clean & tight, including the gears which interfaced with the damaged one. There was a small amount of fine (and I mean
fine) metallic dust stuck to a magnet near the bottom of the differential housing, but nothing scary.
Oh and of course I found an orphaned VSS driven gear in there.
In any case, the replacement spider & side gear set arrived Friday, and was shipped out to the cryo shop on Saturday evening.