VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1937-1945 38 Chevy Body Mount Pads & Shims

Fixing to put my 38 coupe back on the frame. New rockers & front floors replaced.
I bought a mounting pad kit that had 17 pieces. 12 are 1 5/8 wide and 2 1/2 long. I have placed 8 in the obvious places on the frame, leaving 4 in question.
There are two "L" shaped pads and I know where they go. There are two pads with two holes that go back of the doors and rest partly on frame and partly on an outrigging mount.
The final pad has two holes and I assume it goes under the radiator mount.
The '38 shop manual says "ten body bolts to pass completely through the side rails". I know where the long bolts go, but two are long carriage bolts(these are too long for the radiator support). Which is the correct location for these carriage bolt? Should they be used in the front floor mount?
The 4 extra one hole pads, where do they go?
Body is presently on rotissere and doors open and close fine. Any suggestions on shimming. Where to start? I have read manual section on "Body Shimming for Door Alignment", but thought there must be a starting point I should use before "fine tweaking" it.
Manual also says to finger tighten bolts, then give it two full turns. Any thought here?
Finally, and I know this is getting long, but, does the shim go on top of the pad or below it next to the frame?
Appreciate any input.

The core support pads will not be in the kit unless its specified. I see no body bolts listed as being carriage. Those could be for the core support. I can find a core support bolt in the book (for a '38) but the '39 bolt is 6 1/2" long.
Is the kit for morer than one year? They may have pads that fit justa 1937 or a 1939.
In the body bolt section of the parts book they list the bolt sizes by location. They mention #1 thru #7 locations.
The 1937 is not exactly the smae but the 1937 Engineering Manual says the 1937 uses 18 body hold down bolts. Ten of these are thru the frame box section. Says there are three bolts on each side at the cowl.
I would torque the bolts to about 25 Ft. pounds. They never listed torque readings back then.
The factory laid the shims on top of the pads. I would bolt the body down first and see if any shims are required.

Thanks for the reply Gene,

The kit I bought-I just went back and looked(should have done that first!) lists it as a sixteen piece kit with the core support pad thrown in for free. It is also listed as fitting 36-40 chevy car and 36-39 chevy truck.

So, a kit like this would probably have extras to cover that many applications.

I bought the bolt kit from one of the venders mentioned on this site from time to time. There are two long carriage bolts the same length as the other long bolts. I had to buy the core support bolts seperately from the vendor and they are shorter. Bolt has the carriage bolt look, only the head is flater/thinner and the larger around than a regular carriage bolt. Because of the thickness of the core support crossmember of the frame's thickness, I don't see how these bolts can be used. Unless you can magically place the nuts onto the ends of the short bolt up in the void of the crossmember. The holes at the bottom of the crossmember are large enough to pass through the crossmember, but it would be luck for me to attach to the end of the bolts.
Thank you for your insight in tighening the bolts down

The kits they sell are made of readily available parts, not exact duplicates of the original bolts. The only way to get the correct bolts is to go to a well stocked harware store or buy them individually on line.

Carriage bolts are cheap and plentiful so they end up in the kits.

Brian

Bud 38,

My 40 Special Deluxe Coupe has Carriage bols in 2 places. 1 is the back most body mount in the trunk area & the other is the back most body mount in the interior just in front of the rear fender wells. The body has square flanges welded in to accept these carriage bolts. I got my bolt set from Chevs of the 40's & there were some pads & bolts that did not match up & were not needed. There were 4 total carriage bolts 2 on either side. I assume that the ones in the trunk area were carriage bolts to avoid getting something stuck or caught up on them & the other set is under the rear seat so who knows why they were cariage bolts. Hope this helps.