I bent an 8 3/4 housing really badly drag racing it with ladder bars and coil overs, bad enough that I had to pound the 35 splines axles in with a BFH and a block of wood: tsk: It finally broke the welds off of the ladder bar mounts off of housing forcing me to see the bent right axle tube with it on jackstands: puke:
I replaced it with a cut down Dana 60 housing out of a pickup, I use two carpenter squares and a tape measure with the help of my wife to measure 15 inches out from the axle centers both forward and backwards to check for the housing being bent. That check can be done on jackstands also so you can measure all four ways, up, down, front and back of the housing :twocents