pulled the transmission out, and started tearing down the transmission. The nice thing about my problem is I was able to take off the front transfer case (bellhousing). First take off the sun dial locks, and mark the sun dials where they are for backlash etc. I used a dead blow hammer and a larger round punch to loosen the sun dials. The sun dials are normal lefty loosey. Simply remove the 8 bolts to the front transfer case, using a 14mm socket on an impact, and two of them will have brackets in the way so use your dead blow and a 14mm box wrench. Then use the same box wrench for the 3 nuts below the transmission oil pan. Then set it on its side and use the dead blow hammer to hit the front transfer case away to separate and slide it off the input shaft.
I looked and the differential looks okay, the roller bearings might need to be replaced, because of the stub not being fully clipped into the front differential, it was slipping and caused the top of the stub to wear down the splines.
In simpler terms, the front diff drain plug had the dirty oil. The rear half of the transmission (the part with all your gears and transfer gear to deliver power to the rear differential) did not have any dirty oil, not even metal fragments on the magnet plug
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