ECS rear shock plates don't fit?

[LateFan]

I dug these rear shock reinforcement plates out of the new parts box to put them on, and there's a hang-up with a steel "shelf" on the outboard side of the tower in the trunk. The plates won't sit flat and are too tight to wedge up against the shelf.

ECS doesn't know what's up, it should fit against that vertical piece. I don't want to grind them down, there's not much meat to them.

Am I doing something wrong?

[JGood]

No direct experience here, but really, you could chop off that whole area where it's interfering and it wouldn't make a difference - even if you cut it to the point where there was a gap (so it would be like a U-shape, instead of a full circle). The whole point is to spread the load of the mount across a larger surface area, instead of just those two small nuts. That would still be happening.

[Northern]

The seam sealer on my shock towers isn't square like that at all... mine is more of a fillet.

I've run IE RSMs and GC spherical RSMs and I shaved a generous radius into the outboard edge of both to not dig into the corner.

[JGood]

Two things:

1. It looks like they may not be symmetrical (see attached image). If not, try turning it 180 degrees.

2. Proof that cutting into it won't be a problem, see the other attached image for the convertible version.

[mike.bmw]

I flipped mine and had to trim a tiny bit of seam sealer to get them to sit flush.

[LateFan]

All interesting comments -

That "bar" shape on our tower is steel, not sealer......is that not the factory detail? If not......well that's weird.

JGood - I tried to flip them every which way and they won't slip down over that shelf. I'll go look at the driver's side and see if it fits there.

There was no factory football washer there to remove - was there supposed to be? And now that I'm doing this, it's got me wondering......if you're putting in a reinforcement plate, it would be on the underside to spread the compression load over more sheet metal - on top is doing you no good. Unless this is for rebound loading, pulling down. Is that it? I would think the shock load UP would be far greater, as it's from a road bump hit, not the spring load.

As suggested, I can grind a radius on one side to get it to slip down.
Thanks -

[JGood]

The factory shock mount is the ‘lower plate’. This reinforcement goes on the top. There was no gasket on the top from the factory, because there was no upper plate. You can install one if you’d like, but not necessary.

[LateFan]

I was wrong. Took a magnet to it - that "bar" is a square bead of caulk, weird. I used a small sharp chisel and cut out enough to get the pates to sit tight. The plates are symmetrical by the way.

[Northern]

It's like they laid a bead of seam sealer and didn't spread it