Wheel Alignment shims ?

Tim, talk to Darren at West End Alignment in Gardena. He aligned my car last year and I don't think he had to use factory shims. My guess is that there is some aftermarket alternative available.

 

Hi, I also had my car aligned by Darren at West End... great guy, I have been a customer of his since his days at Johnson's alignment.

When I had my 355 aligned, I brought shims that I picked up at eBay. But as it turns out, he had them in stock, as from what I remember, he says they are fairly commonly used by different cars, and are not entirely Ferrari-specific. So he did not have to use my shims. I suspect that's what he used when you got your car aligned.

My 2c.

 

I, personally, think that the Ferrari shim method is vastly better and simpler than most of the more typical alignment methods. The Ferrari system has several useful properties.
1) you can align the car for street operation and make a note of the sims in each A-arm pich up point, then have the car aligned to track mode alignment and make some more notes on the shim stack. Then when you get to the tranc, you can loosen the bolt, insert shims, and you will return to the track alignment, when you leave reverse the process and you are back to exactly the street car alignments.
2) If I remember corrctly, each 0.5mm shim is 0.25 mm of adjustment on toe so this parameter is easy to set (or compute).

 

Hi Tim, I'd love to join you guys at SCS next Sunday, but I have the world's lamest excuse. I have to drive my mother-in-law back down to LAX that morning. Have fun though!