280A Transmission to Intermediate Shimming

[Muddy Rudder]

I have been learning to re-shim a Volvo Penta 280 transmission and finally have it done two months and fifty trips to the parts counter later. I am ready to install it onto the intermediate housing but I have a shimming issue. I over shimmed and installed the transmission onto the Intermediate housing in order to get a distance between the two cases and calculate the 0.004" of bearing crush the manual calls for. I am the king of freakish things happening to people. I calculated the distance and need the 0.05mm shim listed with all the other shims on the parts list to achieve at least 0.003" of crush. Well I drove 45 minutes to get the shims only to find out when I got home that they are a different diameter than all the other shims listed for the application and won't work. I contacted the Volvo Penta dealer I purchased the shims from and he confirmed the 0.05mm shim was a different diameter than the 0.10mm. 0.20mm and 0.40mm shims it was listed with. I need to wait at least a week before they will have an answer from Volvo Penta on the discrepancy.

If there is not a 0.05mm shim available that leaves me with choosing between a pre-torqued gap of under 0.002" of an inch or 0.006"+ of an inch. I surely don't want to spin a bearing due to insufficient bearing crush but having 6+ thousandths seems like alot since the manual calls for 0.004" max crush. Any advice on which way to go if there is no small shim available ?

Have no clue why the thinnest shim listed for this application is a smaller diameter. Be nice if Volvo Penta has the right shim. Somewhere.


Thanks

 

[sandkicker]

I'd take it apart and clean the bearing, the surfaces in the housings that they touch and the measuring point between the housings with a good solvent and inspect the housing surfaces for any burrs and redo the measurement process. You may get a different outcome. Also carefully check the zero on your calipers. One last thing, check the gap at 3 location roughly 120 degrees apart and if not the same, use the average gap.