For no apparent reason, the rear axle started making nasty noises, so I swapped it last winter for the one from the '93 XLT body donor for my '83. Since I didn't want to replace the U-bolts, I left the housing in the '93EB and just swapped the guts.

The source of the noise was apparent as soon as the cover came off because one of the carrier bearing caps came off with it. One whole bolt was still in the cap, but the other had sheared and gone into the gears. It's embedded between the ring gear & the carrier (well, MOST of it).

So ultimately, the axle housing had to come down, but I left the XLT springs on that housing, and installed it with the original U-bolts still tight.

The brakes were pretty rough, but with a little TLC, they work perfectly now.