how many shims should i need for the rear sway bar of a 1965 442? my original control arms were rusted through behind the sway bar shims and i could not tell how many were there. they were rusted beyond counting

 

As many as it takes to center it and not cause any deflection of the control arms when tightening the bolts.

 

gotcha, so no set number. thanks

 

The whole point of the shims was to make up for manufacturing variability. As Eric points out, use as many as needed to just fit between the LCAs without preload. I find that the easiest way to do this is to raise the car with the weight on the suspension, loosely bolt the bar in place, then push it all the way to one side. Now figure out how many shims you need to just fill the gap, then split them as evenly as possible between the two sides. The shims have slotted holes to make this easy.

 

Thanks for the replies gentlemen, and thanks to the admin for editing my thread title, I realized after that I screwed up but couldn’t edit the title.

 

Yeah, for some reason only Admins and Mods can edit thread titles. Go figure.