Identify Thick Gears
 

I'm wondering if previous owner swapped carriers in my car and put a thick set of 3.42s in a 2 series carrier. How can I confirm that I indeed have a 2 or 3 series carrier? According to my car I would have 3.42s in a 3 series carrier, but I have a number of reasons to doubt that it is indeed a 3 series. About 15 people have owned this car before me, so I wouldnt be surprised by anything.
I have the gear set out of the car and wondered if anyone had measurements handy for 3.42s for a 3 series so I could compare to what I have sitting here.

do you have the carrier out ? a pic of the gears would help,side view.

the reason I asked if the carrier is out
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/h...difference.jpg

It's been over a year or so since I had it out. I remember looking at this picture and looking at my carrier and being quite certain that it was a series 3. I've had it parked for at least 6 months now and I'm in the process of getting ready to get it back on the road again.
It was the hardest gear install ever, went nothing like previous installs with other fbodys. Couldn't figure out what the difference was. Used many shims to get it to work right. If I remember correctly the pinion didnt hardly touch the ring gear at first and its possible that the majority of shims ended up on the drivers side. Hard to remember tho.
After the break in period I started my 100 mile commute with the car. After commuting for a week I was leaking gear oil from maybe the driver side wheel seal. Seals got replaced a couple times and everytime the car would hit highway speeds I could count on a leak again.
Axles got replaced and I hadnt taken it out on the highway yet, but noticed some seepage on the drivers side again.
I remember grinding a bit on one of the rear calipers as well because it was hitting the rotor.
Have a full adjustable torque arm that was also installed at the same time and I figured the vibration on the highway was from that and made adjustments because of that... later realized that one of the axles were bent and thats why they got replaced.
Trying to figure out what I should do with the car now before I take it out on the highway again. The only thing I had done since replacing the axles was auto cross it locally. Only had a 3ish mile drive to the track.

I had a buddy that had a 2 series carrier, ordered gears and they sent 3 series. We tried to install them bc we didn't notice and it went just like you described, pinion barely touched and we had to shim it to the max before we realized something was not right.

I went ahead and ordered a spacer. Going to take it apart again this weekend and look at everything.

hand stone the spacer to remove imperfections/burrs. measure at many spots with a good micrometer to verify that the spacer is truly parallel and not have any high spots. not parallel and high spots will cause a varying lash setting. I've got spacers hanging on the garage wall that are junk/scrap.

I used the thick gears. No problems.