Grinding shims.

I know Kawasaki says your not allowed to do it. Ducati is OK for some
models. car people do it all the time. In fact special machines are made
to do it at car dealers. But does any know if it has been done?

 

I've seen one or two shims in a dealer's own shim bin that looked
decidedly ground - luckily, they weren't the ones he gave me.

Assuming the shim's hard all the way through and it's ground
accurately then I don't suppose that it would be a problem.

 

I have two choices. Remove 0.05mm (0.002") tonight from four shims on an
Exe grinder down the road or wait till Monday and order the shims from
Cradley (about 7 quid each IIRC ). A mate has some shims but I probably
won't see him till next week.

 

I'm not sure if the shims are case hardened or not. So one could
feasibly grind through to the soft metal underneath. I don't have
a hardness tester handy.

No local Kawasaki shop. The numbers on the shims have warn off so the bike
shop wont swap.

Something like "Sir needs to replace all the shims because they go
brittle. You also need to bring your bike into the shop so that our highly
skilled technicians can do it for you at 60 pound an hour. No sorry Sir
you cant view or audit the work in progress because we employ gorillas
from the local Zoo and we hide them out the back."

I know of bike shops that have ground shims.

 

Thats what I thought. But you never know. I could have had loads of people
on here saying its done regular.

 

Ones that go on top of buckets are. Ones that go underneath - dunno.

But for Gawd's sake, what is the point?

 

I've done it on a couple, when I couldn't get the proper ones on a
Sunday and the bike had to be back on the road pronto. Still in there,
aamof.

 

And none of the useless tossers that work for the bike shop know how to
use a mic?

 

Urgency, and the fact the nearest stockist of shims was a good hundred
miles away.

Does that help?

 

Good god man, do modern bike shops even own a mic?

 

Get a nice little digital one, then you can show them what they measure.

 

I thought they where hard all the way through so they didn't dish?

 

I don't think they'd dish anyway - they're supported by the buckets. But
'whatever'.

 

Yes, sounds odd. TBH I've only seen one or two shims that had lost
their markings.