First thing was to mate up the engine flexplate to the converter. The converter pulled up to the crank fine, no issues, and there is no clearance left between the converter body and the flexplate retaining bolts, it is pretty tight up there. However, that still left 0.065" clearance between the flexplate and the converter lugs.
Tossing a bolt in there nicely pulls up the plate to the converter but doing so distorts the flexplate a tiny amount. This is the core of my question, what is the max allowable amount that a flexplate can be expected to "take-up"?
Never use the bolts to take up any gap between the flexplate and the converter lugs nor install any shims to take up the gap. Find the cause and fix it. There are reports that some aftermarket crank registers are improperly machined and reports of the flexplate-to-crank bolts preventing proper pull up...especially with 8-bolt cranks.
