1979 R65 Front & Rear Wheel Shims

[Cafe_Rennen]

I'm looking for some spare wheel shims for the front and rear wheels of my '79 R65.

According to real oem the shims have are 17mmID & 23mmOD, with varying lengths from 6.3mm to 7.7mm in increments of 0.05mm (30 different lengths!).

My original shims were accidentally thrown out (D'oh!) and now I'm looking to see if anyone on here has spares before I knock a few up on my lathe.

I currently have both axles built up, just waiting on these shims! Having a few standard sizes will save me a huge amount of time otherwise I'll have to start with the biggest size and work my way down by assembling the wheel and filing down the shims time and time again until they sit right. At least if I have a few different sizes it'll cut the process down substantially.

I'm hopeful that someone has a few knocking around!

Thanks,

[Tony Smith]

Ah yes, the dreaded "wedding rings".

Buy yourself two or three of the longest and grind/file to fit as required.

There is a mythology about these things - in the end the final arbiter of the amount of tension the bearings are under is the spanner hand of the person installing the wheel.

Have a look at Snowbum's (L O N G) dissertation on the topic. I am a firm believer in the "shake the wheel" method of setting bearing tension.

The only wheel bearign failure I have had in 39 years of  BMW ownership was on a warranty replacement wheel fitted up by "trained" BMW stealership mechanics - you guessed it they set the tension too high and used insufficient grease

[Cafe_Rennen]

Thanks Tony,

Yes I think I'll do just that and buy a couple of the larger sizes and see which one is the closest match then hone it in with the file to get a good fit.

As you know from experience, the last thing you want is the bearings to be subject to excessive tension!

Thanks for your input, much appreciated 

[Barry]

I made my own shims, I mean real shims just a few thou thick to add to the wedding bands.

What I did first to get in the right ball park was to make some temporary shims out of a thin plastic material that was easy to cut with scissors. That way I didn't have to make the real thing more than once. On the same principle I wonder if you could knock up temporary wedding bands out of thick wall pvc tube.

I'm also a shake the wheel man. To do it with a fixed torque is near impossible with the shims in 2 thou increments.  You need to work to smaller tolerances that that as you will soon find out.

[Justin B.]

[movedhere] Misc. Technical Discussion [move by] Justin B..