What is wrong with those axles you have? The plates do not need to be perfectly straight, yours look fine from here.
Look at this picture below, the brake parts are oddball so forget that, but the way the plate mounts is what you should look at, the axle and bearing goes in there and bolts down. Pretty simple.
Yes, that's what I was hoping to see.
Look in this picture at the red arrow and you can see where a home-job axle shortening was done. It looks like they cut the spline end off, shortened the axles and welded spline section back on. Take note of the yellow arrow which shows the spline section is missing- home shortening fail. There wasn't a chunck in the rear end so it's been exposed to the elements.
I can only assume they shortened the housing too which is why I am having it checked
