I finally got my darn axle back. Note to self- when an ancient old guy tells you "I can't get to it for awhile" ask him exactly how long that entails, if he does not hold up his end of the finish date (or at least a start date) take your axle back and tell him "thanks for the waste" /rant.
Took the 8.8 to my buddy Darrick's. He's a pro welder. Does all sorts of neat art around town.

We started by tearing the axle down. Removing the brake drums and the axles.


Now is a good time to replace ALL brake hardware and bearing and seals.
You may notice I'm not going into any details on how to do some of this. Two reasons why: 1) it is extremely well documented over and over again on various explorer and ranger and mustang websites 2) I followed directions, so can you. If you feel this is beyond your abilities, pay a shop...
Next, we began grinding off all brackets.


We had to break out the big angle grinder to make quick work of the brackets. This was some serious Detroit steel!

I didn't get any pics after this, but next, we cut off 2 7/8" out of the long side axle tube, then jigged up the angle iron and slid the cut end into it and welded the axle back together. We slid the two short axles back in and verified everything fit and had no rubbing or drag.

a comparison of the two short passenger side axles and the drivers side long one.
Here's EXACTLY what we did:
http://www.thefabricatorseries.com/build-blogs/how-to-narrow-a-ford-explorer-88-rear-axle-part-1-prelude-and-qaThere are a few other write ups out there for this procedure, this guy seemed to be more precise. The other two I looked at were done by some Chevy s10 hillbilly in his backyard. He didn't seem to care much about precision. Believe me, it's gotta be precise or you will destroy bearings, axles, and tubes and worse- lsd's.
Stay tuned. Stage two is coming. Removing brackets from the Celica, and welding them into the ford.