Alignment and stance woes following front end refresh

I know its been a while but I know a couple of other people were wanting an update as they'd had similar issues. I replaced the passenger side AC Delco upper control arm with a Mitsubishi unit, installed my OME heavy duty rear coils, leveled the truck via torsion bar adjustment and finally got it into the alignment shop today. They got 'er aligned to around 0 camber with someone sitting in driver's side to compensate for driver's weight. I asked to speak to the tech but he was busy so I paid and waited a bit. When he freed up I asked him what he had to do. Unfortunately he told me he put 3 shims on the passenger side upper arm. I told him that I'd read several times that this was no good and was notorious for coming loose. He says he torqued the bolts to about 130ft/bs and I see maybe one full thread of the bolt sticking out past the nut. He was an older guy that seemed experienced and assured me he hadn't seen one come loose... He could tell I was skeptical and said to come back after a while and we could double check it together. I'll mark the bolt and nut with some torque marker or nail polish and see. Is this a definite "no way!"?? I'm hoping Toasty will chime in. Prior to changing out the control arm to the OEM version, the camber with the AC Delco control arm was too negative, even with all shims removed. With the new OEM control arm, the camber was too positive and so he added three shims on the right. Seems that I may indeed have had a poorly cast AC Delco control arm so the OEM is an improvement but again, sounds like three shims = bad... Whatcha think?
 

Toasty

Looking for that thing i just had in my hand...
I was just texting a dude with camber issues today, the UCA shaft is offset and one side may have "OUT" cast into it. Depending on how yours was facing stock you might flip it to get a coarse adjustment before you shim it. If you do have a bent shock tower or accident damage and require a thick stack of shims you should measure them with a caliper and get some precision washers (Ace hardware sometimes has them) and install those in place of your shims. The 12mm bolt torque spec it 102-115ftlbs so he's pretty close to the spec but you need to be careful with over tightening them (especially with aftermarket shims) because it can spread the shim causing them to work them selves out and it can also damage the shock tower (pulls the bolt head through the tower).
You really shouldn't have an issue with shims coming loose unless you do a lot of wheeling or large tires though, three shims is quite a bit but they usually have two on one side and one or none on the other.
 

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