Sometimes...Like I mentioned, the toughest part is observing consistent behavior in the blades. On one particular tracking attempt, where the blades were zero'd to the best of my ability, I actually spooled the throttle up to full 3 times, and watch the blades, track, then the red blade go low, then red blade go high. All without making a single adjustment.

As far as the spindle is concerned, I did in fact have to swap the big and little washer so that the smaller washer is up against the bearing as per bdavison's post.

Came across some more information today so we'll see how it goes.