Darren returned roughly three hours after he left, and upon questioning they learned he had swung by his house to grab some things and do some of his laundry. Needless to say, since that was time that could have been spent with the new rear in hand, it didn't go over extremely well.
Once torn apart on the tailgate of Dale's 1 ton, it became apparent we were in for a long night. We had a 742 style case with ate up 5.13 gears on a 35 spline spool, and we had a 489 case with good 4.56 gears on a 30 spline locker. After disassembly of both diffs, it was discovered that someone had badly botched adding MW caps on the 489 case, and it had shims made to go between the case and caps, not good!

Darryl called me for the tenth time that day, asking me if we were rolling yet. He was on vacation in Michigan, and it sounded as though he had spent all day watching the live feed, and following all the message boards. I just had this image of him sitting there swaying back and forth like a drug addict needing his next fix. I knew, after participating the last two years, this was going to be rough on him to miss it.
"You need to get somebody rolling towards Topeka", he reasoned.
"Yeah, I know, this is crazy!"
"Have you heard from Robert or John?"
"Yeah, a text from Opal at 4:50, that they were stopped and eating dinner, nothing since."

Finally after talking it over, we decided to send Dad with Rachael, in the Belvedere. The hope was they would get to Topeka and secure our motel rooms, then we could get there later, and already be checked in. A second benefit would be that Dad would be gone, and wouldn't have to get upset if his four boys had a battle royal in the backyard...or somewhere on a back road between Tulsa and Topeka. Once that decision was made, I gave Rachael one of my credit cards, and went to bed in the pop-up one more time, figuring I might need anything I could get at this point.