Well some good news, my buddy came over to the west side of the mountains for the weekend to visit and had brought some of his rc gear over. Just before him leaving we spotted a kyosho diff from his e-mbx5T conversion that had bad internal bevel gears. Lo and behold its 35mm bearing to bearing!
So I'm gonna order new gears and a 52t spur gear and then I'll be moving on to the next step! I wish Mike would get back to me on a mount, I really don't want to have to fab up a tekno mount.