More than 2 composite body mount shims at each location?

[Ian G.]

Apparently the AIM shows a single composite (cardboard) body shim and one steel body mount shim for each location, and you add steel shims as necessary to set correct hood and door gaps. Body kits from the vendors include either 10 or 20 composite shims. My kit has 20. I've seen posts here on the TDB to use either one or two composite shims. My car appears to have had between 3 and 4 composite shims and between 1 and 5 steel shims at each mount point. They look to have been original and the steel shims are severely rusted to the point of disintegration, and the composite shims are sort of plastered together from the pressure and elements. On some shim stacks I can see the separation between composite shims to count 4, but I can't be sure in some spots if it was 3 or 4 though...

Does this sound typical of factory production? I know some mount points would have different numbers of steel shims, but would some mounting locations have had different numbers of composite shims? if so any theories why?

[Richard M.]

Re: More than 2 composite body mount shims at each location?

Ian, I've seen many combinations of the cardboard and metal shims used on the C1's. A '59(below) I restored a few years ago had mostly cardboard in some mounts, and a '60 I did had mostly metal. I don't know if any of these followed protocol, but possible they used whatever they had at hand to keep the line moving.

Rich