pinion bearing removal question? and carrier spacers?

For the pilot bearing you have two choices. 1. Get a bearing puller made for pulling pilot bearings.

2. Use the grease way. Pack the hole with grease. lots of it..pack it full! I use a little soap as i find it seals better. Then take some that just fits in the hole, (but its gotta be a tight fit! i used an extension) take a hammer and drive it inside. It will force the bearing out!

No idea on the carrier.

The pinion seal will come out when you pound the bearing out from the rear.
The pinion seal is not on there that tight.

My guess on the carrier shims would be to put the larger shim on the right side.
After the pinion gear and carrier/ring gear is in and bolted down to proper specs, check the backlash.
If it too much switch them around.

Make sure you have the carrier caps in the right order also!

BACKLASH:
With my experience on Mustang 8.8 rear ends I found that
4-6 thousandths of an inch is perfect.
Anything over 8 thousandths is getting too loose.
10 11 12 might get you a whine!

Good luck

you should be able to pry the seal out with a screwdriver, but don't damage the rear housing.

you really should have kept these things segregated. the shims, bearing races and bearing caps should have stayed on the side they were on. plus the arrows on the caps should face towards the outside of the car.

got a freind with some type of dial indicator measuring tool? you really should check the backlash once you bolt the diff back in. how do you know that there is a .007 difference between the shims? maybe you could use that tool somehow to check backlash. it might not be perfect, but it might do. to check backlash, all you're doing is measuring how much movement there is when moving the ring gear(pinion gear stays still). i believe factory spec is between .005 and .015, but you'll probably want it on the tighter side because it might loosen up a little over time.

before you took the differential out, i'm sure you moved it around a little bit. meaning, you had to turn it a little bit here and there to get the diff shaft bolt and shaft out. did you take notice how much play there was between the pinion and ring gears? like 10holeLX said, put everything back together with the bigger shim on the passenger side and see how much backlash there is. then try to switch them and note the effects.

there are some internet articles on the subject, if ya need more help. my bud, Scott just did gears a few weeks ago. he did a little write up, so here it is just in case there is some info that helps (note that he has a 95).
http://forums.stangnet.com/showthread.php?t=479678

good luck.