Cessna 180 landing gear,axle,shim, and bolt issues.

I'm going to talk to my mechanic tomorrow but he is more of a Supercub guy. First I found the cracked torque plate on the McCauley brakes. Ordered new axles and bolts from Yingling and brakes and wheels from Alaska. Got everything today and things are not going back together right in my opinion. There is a gap at the rear of the axle to landing gear when I put the shims and washers back just like they came off. Looks to me like it has never been tight from the looks of the shims and one of the old bolts had a shoulder kinda cut into it so it didn't come out very easy. Big wedge to the front and taper to the back with two shims. I took one of the shims out thinking then the bolts won't be trying to bend and get in a bind. Still a gap. Any of the mechanics on here run into this issue. I know what the torque for the bolts is which isn't very much. Thanks for any ideas.

Is that amount of shim just bringing the wheels parallel or is their a bunch of toe out?

Do a real alignment per the manual. I’ve seen them with a slight bind from the offset but nothing that doesn’t disappear when you start tightening the bolts...

The bolts have to bend in order for the axle and shims to sit flat in the leg, no way around it. Tighten in an order that closes the gap as tightly as possible, and use the upper end of the torque range for the bolts (reference the manual for axle install torque, not the generic bolt torque table at the front of the manual.) I like to tighten the smaller bolts first then use the largest bolts tightening to bend them into shape.

Is it possible that the bolts are bottoming out on their shoulder?
Try adding a couple washers & see if tightening will close that gap then.

wait until you want to do an alaska bushwheel conversion and things dont fit...with a 10" wheel...

eskimo77, thank you so much for taking to the time to post. Worked like a charm and I bet I'm not the only one that learned something new!!!