BE front shock bolt clips

[erstearns]

I finally started putting pieces and parts back on the old girl and decided to put the front end on first. Digging thru the bags of parts looking for the six mounting bolts I found four y shaped spacers or shims. What are they for, where do they go and why are there only four? My shop manual is back at the house (I know dumb place for it considering it is five miles from my garage). :madder:

 

[JPSmit]

flux capacitor?

 

[erstearns]

Unfortunately, even Dr. Brown could not cause a BE to achieve the necessary speed for TT, even with the flux capacitor.

The part in question is the same as that used to shim up the A arm on a good old made in the USA road wagon. I don't see any mention of them in the manual and I recall they were under the front shocks (I think). PO probably used for some unknown reason. Installing procured rebuilt so will do without.

Not really Y shaped, more like trident with the middle tine removed.

 

[erstearns]

Was looking thru some old pictures and noticed that two of the "shims" were placed under the shock around the inboard bolt. Any idea why the PO would have shimmed up in such a fashion?

 

[Jake42]

Hi Eric,
If you put shims under the shocks, it moves them inboard slightly imparting a bit of negative camber. Maybe this is what the intent was.

 

[erstearns]

Jake, that is the conclusion I came to also. I found a pic from the disassembly stage and it showed two shims under the inner chock mount. The result would be negative camber or at least less positive, I think. Really the only way to adjust for that effect. I had forgotten where they were and when putting back together was puzzled about the pieces. Mystery solved. Will install rebuilt sans spacers and go from there. I assume this is a well understood subject for the racers in the crowd but had my confused for a moment.

 

[GeeBee1]

Yes, they were used to reduce positive camber. Now a days we have offset bushings and offset trunions. In the old days the other trick was to drill out the shocks a bit larger and slide them down/inwards.

Pat