To make a long story short I ran into the same problem with a brand new pair of Yukon axles. There is a "block" (I can't remember the proper name of it) in the middle of the carrier that needs to be removed. This requires the carrier to be disassembled. Instead of doing that I took the axles to a machine shop and had 3/8" cut off each axle. Came home and installed them without problems. Been that way for years now. I guess that isnt the professional way of installing the axles but I didnt want to have disassembled the carrier.