Attaching a thin hardened steel shim to bronze clad steel washer

Reply to
Hoyt McKagen
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I need to create thicker thrust washers for the gear box in my Triumph. THere are no oversize thrust washers available in the thickness range that I need. THe thrust washer has a steel substrate (approx. 0.110 thick) with a thin bronze face plating. THe face has numerous golf ball style dimples for oil retention. I plan on attaching a hardened steel shim to the backside of the thrust washer. I need to permanently secure the shim and then grind the ID of the shim to be the same irregular shape as the thrust washer - since I do not know why the thrust washers have a "US football" shape on the ID, I figured I would be safe and copy it into the spacer . The shims will be 0.004 and 0.008 inch on the two thrust washers. My options include using Harris Staybright silver solder (just bought to sweat CU air lines for my shop

- thanks to the suggestions for that question), 45% silver solder or TIG. I think that I might be able to TIG a few dots on the perimeter and then manually dress the local surface for parallelism. I have one old thrust washer to play with (before I try anything on the new parts) and numerous shims (since McMaster sells them 10/pack).

Now its off to bed and then early tomorrow I'll be off in Google land awaiting your thoughts or suggestions.

Reply to
aribert

The problem with attaching such a thin shim is the thickness of the solder. This can exceed the thickness of the added shim. There is also the problem of maintaining flatness. Could you make a new shim from solid bronze? The bore of the original washer sounds interesting. Does the washer locate on it's I.D. or O.D.? Triumphs were cheap machines when they were built so the bore may not need to be that shape but could just be (very) rough finished. It could have worn to that shape. Do the owners club have any information? You don't say whether the Triumph is a car or bike. Just curious.

John

Reply to
John Manders

Do you really need to permanently attach the thin shims ? I would think that whatever locates the trust washer would also locate a thin shim behind the trust washer. of course I have not seen the situation. Another possibility would be to get a trust washer that is too thick and have the back surfaced ground until it is the correct thickness. Another possibility is that there are not oversized thrust washers in the correct size, because the thickness is not that critical. And last of all, is there any possibility that the steel substrate is a peelable shim? That is it is made of laminated stock and you can peel off layers until it is the correct thickness.

Dan

Reply to
Dan Caster

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