so the repair on the bandsaw of ice worked really well I was able to hold this piece and cut off
about a quarter inch so it started with a two inch wide 50 millimeter wide piece of steel
there yeah so this one we have to cut down to one in three-quarter inches and this would be a
block of steel that we're going to make a pair of axel pinion shims for a early model Jeep probably
a cj3 or something like that they have Springs that are only one in 3/4 inch wide so we'll be
cutting a 12 degree angle in this block after we drill it for a center hole and then I've got
a tray to this block of Steel here and this one we're cutting down to 2 and 3/4 inches and then
here we've got a piece of stock that's already been cut to width 2 and 1/2 and length is 5
this one's going to be one point five degree shim there and then just to show you what the finished
shims look like here's one of our finished ones would have this was a six degree two and 3/8 by
six inches so we've got the pocket here for the center bowl drilled in the middle we have it
stamped with the angle even stamped the angle on the end of the shim there once its installed on
the truck you can look on the back face and see the angle and then if you pull the springs off
of the axle you can see that the number stamped on that face - we start with a hunk of Steel we
cut it to length cut it to width mark and drill a center hole and then we cut the shims out and
machine a pocket in there stamp them with the angle clean them up paint them with the shims do
is they change the angle of your axle relative to the leaf springs and depending on which way
you install the shim and how steep it is you can tip your axle up or down and what that does is it
corrects the alignment on your drive shaft so if you've installed a suspension lift or done
something to the suspension any number of things can cause the angle to be off so you may need to
install a shim to correct the pinion angle so like this one is a pretty small correction just one and
a half degrees this one will be a much bigger correction it'll be a 12 degree shim so we'll
be cutting the whole diagonal there this one's kind of in the middle 6 degrees so we do all
sorts of angles any angle you want any length any width once you start modifying the suspension and
the drivetrain on a vehicle you might need shims you might need driveshaft spacers you might need
both it's not just a really simple answer I know when I first got into modifying my truck I found
a web page that said Oh a 3 inch suspension lift you need a 3 degree shim maybe in one particular
case you might need something like that but in general that sort of rule doesn't apply you need
the shim that corrects whatever angle offset you have not some formula in a book that says you know
3 inch lifts three degrees shim well there's the three degrees shim that I originally bought three
degrees right there I used it and it turned out I didn't need it you don't always need to add a
shim if you put a suspension lift on it depends on the type of lift you have the type of drivetrain
you have the type of driveshaft the joints on the driveshaft and all that sort of thing
so once I figured that out and I took the shim out everything was okay my drive shaft vibration
went away there's not a simple table that you can look up you know this vehicle needs this
shim or this lift needs that shim you need to figure out what in fact that you really do need
yeah so this customer here has actually ordered a set of longer center bolts and you can see the
purpose of that pocket there in the top of the shim is that allows the head of the bolt to sit
flush to the shim so that when you tighten this bolt down the head isn't put under stress so it
comes out square on this side but the bolt head would be at a severe angle if you didn't put that
pocket in there you can see how that would cause this bolt head to want to bend over and then this
end is straight so you would put a severe kink in the bolt right there and it's gonna weaken
and break so that's the purpose of this pocket and our shims so yeah this shows kind of the
range of sizes this is among the smallest shims we make inch and 3/4 for the early model Jeeps
this is probably for an FJ 60 Toyota Landcruiser the 2 and 3/4 inch wide we do three inch wide for
some of the newer Ford models two and 3/8 wide two and a half for the Jeeps pretty much any
width any length any angle within reason I think we've done either 15 I think we did a 17 degree
shim once these are 12 these are 5 anything from one degree up about as high an angle as you can
imagine I'll put a link to our webpage we have a ton of information on how to measure for shims
because these are built to match your vehicle so you need to tell us how long your spring perch is
how wide your Springs are and then what angle you want the shims to be and then do you need a 5/16
or 8 millimeter centre bolt or do you need a 3/8 or 10 millimeter centre bolt we also do 7/16 1/2
inch we do the shims these are bolt on so the idea with bolt on shims is used run the center
bolt through the shim and then you put this on the bottom or on top of your leaf pack so you
have all your other leaf springs here you put the nut on tighten this all together and this
shim is now bolted to your springs the other option we have is we can make these in what we
call a weld-on version where you have a hole big enough to fit the head of the bolt into
and then you weld the shim to your axle and then you just drop the head of your
Center pin in your leaf springs into the hole and then that is what locates your
spring and axle together so we do bolt on weld on various size holes
because these things all matter that we can do custom sizes holes lengths widths angles
check out the link to our webpage in the video description I'll also put it in the
end screen over here and yeah if you have any questions on that post up in
the comment section below yes I got to get these packed up here this afternoon
and off to the post office so I guess I got a run as always thanks for watching