The carrier bearings are the ones that hold the axle shafts once they slide in correct?

 

"very carefully used my impact gun to slowly tighten the crush sleeve" I did the same thing on a '77 10 bolt rear I used a tire spoon through the yoke indexed the pinion nut and just turned up the air pressure gradually to get the right preload.

 

Please for your safety, use self tapping screws or nuts and bolts to reattach that airbag sensor to the core support and disconnect the battery when working with anything in the airbag system.
Those are the sensors that sense the impact in a crash and are used in conjunction with the airbag module to deploy the airbags themselves.
If one of those sensors are damaged and the module itself gets impacted the airbags will deploy.

I have accidentally done this when i tried to remove an airbag module from a wrecked car with an impact gun. It scared the hell out of me when they went off.

 

No. the carrier bearing supports the ring & pinion carrier assembly. The axles are supported by the Splined input in the carrier assembly & axle bearings on the outer ends of the axle tubes

 

THIS! Please heed that advice