Axle Shims... related to brakes and sure seals (be

1- What is the typical "starting point" on the first side for shimming? Nothing? (as it was before..)

2- A post below (brakes and sure seals) indicates that the shim(s) go against the axel housing... If so, what keeps them sealed? (my shims show some pitting from corrosion and I would be concerned with leakage)

Jim

Splitting-up the shims to each side is fine, and probably make the install easier anyway. I had one side with 5 shims, three of them where .005", very flimsy, pain in the behind to get them all lined-up with the hub studs, backing plate, etc. when installed behind the backing plate. I had a heck of a time. In the end, I pulled them back off, gooped each one with a couple daps of silicone and made a "shim sandwich" with all the shims. That made it a lot easier to line-up all the bolt holes. In hind sight, maybe I should have used grease for that instead of silicone though. I had painstakingly scraped down and cleaned each shim, no fun with those .005 shims!
You may find some of your shims have worn unevenly due to the issue John mentoned below, shifting around due to loose bolts. I had a .005 shim that actually had holes worn into it and measured .003 - .005 depending where I measured it. Maybe you could just double gasket one side to make-up for your bad shim. The gasket material I got from the local auto place was .012". The old worn out gaskets I scraped off were .007". The Manual has a blurb about using "standard gasket material that is .008 - .012 for the axle housing(trumpet) re-install". I assume the same applies for the gasket for the hub & backing plates.

The nuts holding the hub on are only torqued to 35 ft/lb... not very tight. After reading John's comment on how they tend to work loose, I decided to use locktite on mine, not the permanent type, but the type that can be broke loose with hand tools.

sorry for the long reply... just went thru all the same stuff so it if fresh in my memory.

George

Just as added info to complete the subject for the "next guy": the studs are no longer sold by MF anymore and if you order some (I needed two) they send you hex head bolts instead... I still haven't found a source but haven't tried too hard either.

Jim

This is what my completed brake job looked like. Why blue backing plate you ask? That was the only color of rattle can enamel I had laying around the garage. I felt like I needed a coat of paint after cleaning it up real good, most the paint came off with the solvent I used to clean it up. Makes for a nice picture anyway.

Hex head bolts sound like they should work fine. Might actually make it easier to line-up the shims, backing plate, and hub anyway. 1/2 of my studs turned out of the hub when I tried to remove the nuts anyway. I ended up using blue locktite to re-install the studs, and on the nuts also.

Jim, I'm in Marengo, OH... where abouts are you?

George

Transmission must be in neutral. (If not in neutral, then all you will see is opposite rotation with differences in resistance.)