[Jacfourteen]

3.42 sounds about right for what you want. The carrier is the large section inside the housing that the ring gear attaches to and the axles slide into. As far as changing gears yourself its kind of iffy, there are people that say they had good success and there are others (like me) that run into BIG problems later. I have swapped many engines, trannies, rebuilt a few engines, etc and I figured I could handle swapping gears on a 94 ranger I used to have. Long story short, it worked great after the swap.....for 2 days, after that it wouldn't move. I pulled it apart and the carrier was sheared of at each bearing, so the carier was now in 3 peices. I ended up finding a junkyard rear with the ratio I wanted for $125 and swapped the whole thing in and it ran great the rest of the time I had the truck. Not trying to scare you, just trying to let you know to do your research before jumping in. Good luck with everything.