Well...i know you said you got this working now so great...a couple things from reading the pages....you should have had a decent amount of fluid come out....5 oz or so when you pulled the cad..
Due to it being dry its very likely that the splines on the drivers side axle are rounded over a bit...this isnt super obvious but a really close look and youll see...if you have trouble shifting or you hear that grinding and then thunk its probably due to this...i'd wanna pull the axle and file down the burrs or round overs....should work nice and smooth then..
here is a pic of my axle not long ago that needed filing.
you can see here there isnt a lot of play for the shift collar to move over so any burrs or rounding over will make it hard for it get over there.
Oh yeah....and you got real lucky...those bolts like to break...i had one twist off on me when i replace my cad...had to drill it out and pull out the trusty tap set....it was the bottom left hole in the pic up there.