Drive gear Bell housing shim

[RestoreThemAll]

I'm finishing up a freshening of my BJ7 center shift gearbox. Take a look at the bell housing (clutch housing) pics attached. The surface of the bell housing where it meets the bearing plate and the bearing plate are a little chewed up. The one pic shows just the bearing plate flipped over to compare the two mating surfaces. The other pic shows the spring and plate as they were installed.

I'm guessing that the above means that the bell housing wasn't shimmed right. Or is there another cause?

AH Spares offers .002 and .005 shims. The bearing plate and the spring aren't available that I can find. The bearing plate is about .0175 thick.

I ordered and installed one .002 shim along with the original plate and spring. I installed the bell housing without a gasket. I would have expected it to be too tight, as the paper gasket is more than .002 thick. Though I'm not sure how to determine if it's correct or needs more shims. Can anyone walk me through the process?

Dale

 

[RestoreThemAll]

Follow up: John at Quantum Mechanics rebuilt my OD while I was working on the gearbox. I strongly recommend John. Excellent to work with, very thorough.

John confirmed that the following is fine, and that the plate and spring are OK to reuse.
Using calipers I measured the depth of the housing cutout where the plate and spring rest, with the plate, spring, and a new.002 shim installed. I held the spring firmly in place but did not compress it much if any.
I also measured the gear bearing to try and determine how far it would go into the housing when installed. I took four measurements for each and came up with an average.
Gear .2224
Housing .2020
The spring will then compress .0204

Side note; the shift shaft bumper that is supposed to be in the bell housing was missing. I made up a hard rubber bumper 1/8" thick and glued it in.

I replaced most of the brass: thrust washers, syncros.

I'll have a full drive train radiator to rear wheels at the completion of this phase. I may just fire this beast up before spring!

Dale