Thanks for all the feedback. After seeing the price of the 3.55 gears and reading on various forums that the gears were gonna chip or burn up if I got it wrong (most were surely extreme and exaggerated cases) I wanted to get some opinions from someone who has done this before.
I did load the ring gear by putting a pry bar between the differential case and the housing and turned the pinion which was a two person job for me with the enclosed drive shaft.
I used the GM gear marking compound which I got from amazon for 12 bucks w/ free shipping. The 1 oz tube did not sound like much to me but it is way more than I will ever use in my lifetime. I didn't put a dent in the tube with this job and I did many iterations.
