so the original plan was to reinstall the rear differential permanently tonight... yeah, right
first issue was I painted most of it, so I got to paint the rest of it tonight - and since my day job kind of requires not having paint adhered to me, that meant I had to do other stuff
so painted hubs and installed new seals
the way I move 700# axles by myself
the the issue... I never finished mocking up the shocks and found I have one major issue and one minor one - the driver's side shock hits on the frame... so first, make sure the axle is centered
it wasn't, but centering it helped the issue but didn't fix it.
and put the driveshaft back in (mostly to get it off my bench) and I found a minor problem... the nut I was wondering why it was on the floor... is one for the U-straps... dagnabit
So I fixed the hitting issue by offsetting the shocks with new spacers, but it brings up another issue that I'm still not sure how I'm going to mitigate.... I should have bought remote reservoirs for the rear and non-remote for the front - instead of the opposite. The reservoir can twist and hit the frame.... so I dunno how I'm going to solve that issue... oh well, if it were easy, then the Jeep guys would do it.