I was going to adjust the preload but when I took the nuts, gear, and spacer off I noticed lateral play in the spindle. It looks like this is just play that is inherently there because of the design of tapered bearings. This play goes away when the spacers and everything are installed, and before my drive belt tore I had the dial indicator setup and I was getting maybe .0005 of deflection on the outer surface and inner bore of the spindle. This sounds ok to me!? The only issue I noticed is that the spindle gear is not fully engaged so I think I need to trim a few thousandths off the spacer so the gear will align correctly. This should help with preload as well because then I won't have to crank so hard to get the gear to align. Sound about right?