Toyota is a first echelon engineering company. So was Hewlett-Packard in the 70's, 80's, and 90's, and Agilent after they spun off from HP. I spent 44 years doing engineering for those companies in that environment. Companies like that do not put untested and uncalculated stuff in their product designs just because it was "laying around from the previous production run of forklifts". Every design gets engineered, prototyped, and tested. At that point a decision will be made as to whether or not it meets product expectations. Management may get involved to adjust expectations for economic or schedule reasons, and Toyota's expectations may be different from yours, but don't for a minute believe that they just guessed and hoped.
[MENTION=100496]blackworks[/MENTION] is correct in that, based on this forum, there are not a great number of stripped ring gears from behind V8's. Yours is the first I can remember. And, you still haven't addressed the question I asked as to whether it was properly set up. The fact that you had a locker installed back there means someone besides Toyota has been into it, which raises possible doubts about the gear setup. As I said in my first post in this thread, the most likely cause for ring gear tooth failures is too much space between the ring gear and the pinion. If the side adjusters were too loose on the carrier bearings, the ring gear could push sideways away from the pinion and cause the mayhem you experienced.
opcorn:
