Since I do not have an assortment of shims to chose from I opted to buy a shim punch and punch out my own shims. This worked OK to a point. The job had to be finished before I could order shim stock any thicker then .002" and I had to make do with that when I assembled my injectors today. My wife needs the car for Saturday.
The job would have been easier If I had had some more thicknesses to choose from.
The outside diameter of the shims are close to 7/16.
The shim punch will punch up to .010" of hardened shim stock and I got new as a "Buy It Now" on Ebay $50.
Also another fuel injection company Diesel KiKi makes thin shims for their copies of Bosch injectors that also fit Bosch. Since it was 25 years ago I have no idea what they would cost now.
I added this pic. There is a metal bolck with holes under the orange paper tag.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

Being designed in Germany, I'm sure the injectors need metric sized shims .. does the size discrepancy matter?

Also, what kind of shim stock do you punch your shims from?

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'83 300DTurbo http://badges.fuelly.com/images/smallsig-us/318559.png

Broadband: more lies faster.

Interesting kit!--But sounds like a lot of work!

Does this also cut the hole in the shim centre...?

Hole needs to be there to allow the 'leak-off' to escape...

Unless you have summit like this or a complete shim-kit its not even worth owning a 'pop-tester' apart form to confirm whether an injector is good or not. Trying to shim-up without the full range is pointless and Very frustrating without-Ask me how I know!

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http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...0TDnoplate.jpg

Alastair AKA H.C.II South Wales, U.K. based member

W123, 1985 300TD Wagon, 256K,
-Most recent M.B. purchase, Cost-a-plenty, Gulps BioDiesel extravagantly, and I love it like an old dog.

W114, 1975 280E Custard Yellow,
-Great above decks needs chassis welding--Really will do it this year....

The ratio of shim thickness to change in release pressure is governed by the K value of the spring so it is independent of the ground state pressure of the injector without shims.

The spring K value (ratio of change of spring force : change of spring compression distance) will only change very slightly with age (unless corroded or severely overheated) so the ratio will stay essentially constant, provided springs look OK on inspection.

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1983 300SD with bad undercarriage rust, with old greasecar 2-tank conversion. About 200K miles, just an adolescent but with premature bone disease.

I am not sure what is going on in the above paragraphs.
Even if the length of the Spring does not change over time the strength of the individual springs decreases and the strength varies from Spring to Spring even if they are compressed to the same length they will all have different pressures.

That happens even with new Springs but the difference will not be as much from new Spring to new Spring.

This means that after the cleaning and lapping and clearing again of the parts you assemble the Injectors. You Pop Test them and you write down the pop/opening pressures of them.

Pick an Injector and decide what pop/opening pressure you want to achieve and use the formula in the Manual to estimate the change in Shim thickness you want.

Take the Injector apart and replace the shim/s with the size you estimated.

You assemble an Injector with that Shim (write down how much of a Shim Thickness you changed). You Pop Test it again.
If it came out OK you are done. But, most often it is still going to be off.
But, now you can take the original pop pressure and your new pop pressure and the amount of Shim Thickness you changed and a make yourself a formula as to how much pressure change you got per thickness of shim change.

You rummage through your selection of Shims and try to find one with the thickness you calculated.

You take the Injector apart again and change the Shim/s thickness and repeat the process until you get the pop pressure you want or you give up and decide that will have to be close enough.
Then you move on to the next Injector and repeat.
It seams like there is always one Injector that you will not have the exact sized shim you want.

In a Fuel Injection Shop they will charge you at least 1/2 hour of their labor rate per Injector.
I person who is used to doing the job and has all the tools and equipment he needs and is doing a whole set of Injectors can do the completed rebuild 10-15 minutes per Injector.
(And they will try to balance them as close as they can without spending too much time on the set.)
Also if you have a lot of Injectors you can cut the time even more because it is easier to find a balanced set from a large selection of Injectors and the cleaning and lapping process moves faster per Injector.

It takes less time then that to do direct Injection Injectors that do not adjust the pressure with shims because there is an adjusting screw for that.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

That's a good thing, because the "ground state pressure" without a shim is usually zero.

What a relief!!!

Or can only single shims be used? I'm coming from the 'single shim' camp, but with a limited supply of shims, I've wondered about the ability to stack 2 to get a closer balance.

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1985 300D-189k The 'UD', Ivory and Pinkamino
1979 300D-211k Dark Gray, Parchment
A 1980 Harley-~166k and
A 1994 Ford diesel pickup-349k and
A 1990 gasser Volvo wagon-145k

It does not matter if one or more Shims are used; with the exception that the Shim that goes against the Spring should be the thickest one and made of steel.

When I worked in a Fuel Injection Shop I would sometimes get Injectors that someone had installed Brass Shims made from generic Shim Stock (they also had 1 or more Steel Shims in the stack).

There was no problem apparent from using them as long as they are not directly against the Spring.

Also for the Mercedes Injector application the Shims do not have to have the hole in the Center. You can put shims with no hole against the upper Injector Body.

What was nice while they lasted is my Boss got in a Box of Thin Diesel Kiki Injector Shims for a special job we did. The thin shims made it easy to bump up the opening/pop pressure. After that box was finished He never ordered any more.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

I have a pop tester and have done 3 sets of injectors so far (1 Mercedes and 2 VW's) . I always pop the injectors with the old nozzles first. All 3 sets were closely matched in pop pressures (within each set) and they all have only one shim in each injector. The new nozzles that were put in the 3 sets of injectors did not require any additional shims- they were all within spec with the original shim. Maybe I was just lucky that the nozzles I got were closely matched? Two sets were Monarks and one set was Bosch.

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85 300D turbo pristine w 157k when purchased 167,870 July 2025
83 300 D turbo 297K runs great. SOLD!
83 240D 4 spd manual- parted out then junked