no not acceptable, you have the wrong wishbones looking at the picture

Is there anything that can be done short of cutting the brackets off? Can I use spacers?

The chassis is custom built and the builder told me these were the wishbones that were needed.

Can't you shim them with washers / spacers. This is what I did with my build to allow for some adjustment to set up geometry

You must fill the gap with either a spacer or a stack of washers, otherwise:

1) You won't be able to tighten the bolt up so the bracket clamps the "crush" tube
2) The wishbone won't be supported correctly under braking loads, possibly leading to eventual failure from fatigue.

Note that there is supposed to be a gap on both the upper wishbone brackets in order to be able to correctly set the castor angle (using spacers/washers). Getting this wrong will mean poor self centring (which is an IVA fail).

Just make sure that you space out both bushes so that the wishbone bushes fit snugly without any significant binding (but polybushes are always a bit stiff). You may need washers on both sides of the bushes to get this right.

[Edited on 31/10/12 by MikeRJ]

with my ocd, i couldn't drive that with all that mess going on! I'd cut it off and make a new bracket

quote:

---

Originally posted by vanepico
with my ocd, i couldn't drive that with all that mess going on! I'd cut it off and make a new bracket

---

I think I would have to see both brackets in the same picture to make any accurate judgement

Andrew

[Edited on 31/10/12 by Andy S]

Well it's a pretty messy way of doing it, i'd definately want to make sure that never saw the light of day