[phantomrt]

The shims are behind the outer bearing race. I'm not sure what is meant when you say "behind the bearings".

I am an overall inexperienced transmission rebuilder, so stick with Jack's advice over mine. I have replaced taper roller bearings in a few of my own manual transmissions over the years. Every time I did it, replacement of the bearing alone resulted in perfect bearing preload by using the exact same shims that were in there before. My theory is that the bearing manufacturing tolerances are so good that the shims are not there for taking up slack in bearing tolerances, but instead all the tolerance is in the cast aluminum transmission case instead. Or maybe tolerances in the transmission shaft also.

On a 2nd note, how in the world did you mess up one of these bearings just by assembling the transmission? They are made of the hardest metal in the world and no chisel that I have in my tool box can do more than barely scratch them. Maybe they're just cheap chisels.

Next time I do this, I am going to try heating up the aluminum housing to remove the outer race--I've always carefully cut the race with my dremel, and at which point it just falls out.