Thanks everyone. I replaced the guides, felts and pads...everything is fixed now. Upon closer inspection the felts that were missing provided enough space so that the edge of the tub did not rub the guides. Being that they weren't there, the tub edge was grinding into the guides and this lowered it enough that it was rubbing the blower housing. The guides were ground almost all the way through by the edge of the tub. So I would say I narrowly avoided disaster.

On a side note I would like to say how frustrating it is that Maytag would make these assemblies like this. Simply putting a bend in the guide rails would give the tub edge clearance in case the felts went missing as it seems they commonly do. This would prevent the tub from ever eating it's way through the guides unless the whole pad was worn off. From an engineering perspective the only reason to do this is if you know the part has a tendency to fail and you are trying to get service calls out of people. If this happens again which I am sure it will I am thinking about having a friend who is a machinist make me some guides...yeah they are only a few $$$ but it made properly they could easily last the life of the machine with a set of pads.

Again, thanks everyone for the help.