j par, I'm sorry, I'm just not understanding you post
Ok, I think I'm getting it.
The brass rings go in any old way, as long as the struts are engaged in the proper areas. You will want to swap those brass rings all around anyway. Typically, the 2nd ring wears out the fastest, and the 4th hardly wears at all. What I do is grab the input gear in one hand, and drop a brass ring on it. I eyeball the distance between the flat face of the ring, and the front face of the clutching teeth. I check them all like this and line them up from the highest sitting to the lowest sitting, highest on the left. Then I go back and make sure every one grabs the cone with just the lightest amount of pressure. The brass should lock on to the cone with just a bit of pressure.If it doesn't lock onto at least one gear, it's junk. If any ring wobbles on the cone, it is oval, and junk.Replace it. Any ring that has fallen is suspect. Now the rings are lined up from highest sitting and locking, to the lowest. The leftest is the best one. Now take that best ring and place it lightly on each other gear. Line the gears up the same way, except from the one on which the ring sits the lowest, to the highest, again from left to right.If the input gear is not on the far left, make it so. Now, slide the brass rings over, one at a time, so that each ring lines up with a gear below it. The best ring goes on the worst cone, and so on. In this way, the rings can be reused. Brand new rings are not guaranteed to work. They must be checked for wobble and their locking ability. If you have a lathe, I would chuck each gear on it and rough up the cones with 100grit emery cloth. Just a light touch. There's no spec(at least I've never come across one) for the distance between the flat face of the brass ring, to the clutch teeth face. If it get's to be too small, then the struts like to flip out the backside after a shift, making it impossible to get the tranny out of that gear.When it gets to zero, it no longer works.... I would estimate, thats estimate, that .020 is approaching the limit on 4th, and the other gears could be a little less, maybe .008-.012. The 4th cone needs the extra cuz it sits quite far away from the slider, so it needs all the help it can get. But honestly, gaps this small, just mean you'll be pulling the tranny again soon to put new rings in. How soon?can't say. Depends on how you drive, and the oil quality, I guess.
-Another long-winded AJ answer
