Hello from Central Kentucky. Let's begin with a confession. While I do have an older('97) F350, my daily driver and backups are all GM. One of which is my reason for being here. It's a 2002 S10 Blazer, which for the last four years has been used as a work truck. It carries a lot of weight and spends most of it's time running up and down country roads as well as in and out of a lot of farmers' fields. It does this pretty well, but has brought me to one of it's biggest weak points. Chevy's lightweight rear end.
This is probably not the right department for technical stuff and will probably be moved sooner or later, but here goes. It's my understanding that it's common practice for performance/durabiilty reasons to "ash can" the Chevy 7 point. whatever rear ends in favor of the Ford 8.8 from an Explorer. I'm now in the process of just that, and have obtained a unit from a 2000 Explorer. For my use I'd prefer a limited slip(which this is not), but with time and budget restraints have decided to go with what I have.
My main question at this point concerns parts interchangeability on these rear ends. I know the 8.8 was used on a number of different vehicles over a number of model years, and probably some, many, or possibly all use the same basic bearings, carriers, shim types and setup procedure? Should I discover at some point the limited slip feature (which the truck now has, but will soon lose) is something I don't care to be without, would the LS carrier in any 8.8 unit from another truck, car, or whatever be likely to fit in this housing or is it much more model/year critical than I'm hoping. I do understand the process of swapping it out is not for the novice, and should this ever come about would be left to someone with the experience.