Material for Self Made Oval Shims for WRD

[Pawel66]

I wanted to ask/confirm if making those shims of aluminum sheet metal is ok - aluminum is soft and gets pressed when screws are tightened... I am hearing that FIP reaction to thickness of these shims is very sensitive and 0.1mm matters.

So how good aluminum is for that purpose?

I have read posts Members made these shims of soda (or beer) tins sheet metal. Does it work? I have nice aluminum sheet metal 0.5mm and 1.0mm, but will it stay at those thicknesses when compressed?

Steel is certainly more difficult to work with, but with a staged drill and wooden block - I managed to cut proper hole, so probably it will work...

[Cees Klumper]

Aluminum (or brass) should work I think. Actually I don't think there's any coolant or oil that could escape, so the shims don't have to be perfect, and you don't have to tighten the two screws all that much so self-made shims should retain their shape and thickness.

[wwheeler]

Cees is correct. The shims are not coolant gaskets. The coolant is sealed by the round machined spacer that forces the bulb's angled seat to compress onto the housing's angled seat. It is a metal to metal seal. That being said, an aluminum shim is fine. There is not that much compressive strength from the two screws and the shim thickness will not change when compressed by the two screws.

My concern with aluminum is that it is easy to bend and kink when this thin. I would think it is possible to have a kink in the aluminum shim and not being able to completely flatten it out, thus changing the ultimate thickness. Brass would be better and steel better yet. But, that is a minor concern if the aluminum is handled carefully. 

[Pawel66]

Thank you for your advise!
i will go with aluminum then. Yes, it is difficult to imagine 0.1mm aluminum shim handling - must be very fragile. But for those thin adjustments I have some of the steel ones.

I will use three round steel shims from a generic set to see what I need, then will fabricate an aluminum one with the proper thickness.

[Cees Klumper]

It seems this would be a good candidate for aftermarket fabrication.

[Pawel66]

So it seems!

As well as the door catch shims...

[66andBlue]

Pawel,
do you know the part number for these WRD oval shims?

[Pawel66]

I was not able to find them neither in the Daimler parts list, both BBBs nor on the Bosch parts list for the governor...

[66andBlue]

Thank you Pawel!

[col320ce]

I used stainless steel I found on ebay. Worked well. I was using aluminium but I found that it was too soft and inconsistently deformed when tightening up.
I think I posted a post of the setup I used.